A/N: Again, I don't own these characters. I apologize if this next scene is a little predictable to what will be my last chapter, but I'm no Shakespeare. Thanks for the reviews guys. I might wait a little longer than an afternoon to let you read the last chapter. ::laughs evilly:: Happy reading...
The small cafe wasn't nearly as crowded as Mark expected it to be for a Friday afternoon. Stepping in was like stepping into the past. The times where he had been a regular in this place were far away from anything he was now. He had held the door for her and taken her coat; two newly acquired acts of chivalry. Mark had never been your typical gentleman. He had never quite known how. Now, as he sat across from her, her hair still dripping from the rain, her small frame still quietly shivering, he knew that she needed this. Someone to make sure she didn't do anything that someone else could do for her. At least for now.
Mark nursed his steaming black coffee as though it were a foreign substance. He never had really liked coffee. He was more of a tea kind of person. But what did people drink who were in mourning? Something black and strong. He would have preferred liquor of some sort, and from the look on Mimi's face she would have too.
"So..." She spoke up, her head resting on the heel of her hand, a cigarette dangling from her slender fingers. "What have you been doing the past year?" She almost fleetingly let a small, playful smile escape, but suppressed it with a long drag on her cigarette.
Mark sighed, adjusting his small wire rimmed glasses. "Nothing sadly. I would have been better off not taking that offer in LA." He wanted to keep the details quiet. She doesn't need to know everything that happened out there, he told himself. "I only got a few offers for my film. Nothing spectacular."
"Did you sell? Did you premiere?" She seemed more eager to hear, leaning towards him, resting her slight arms on the table.
"No..." He muttered, looking back down at his coffee. "No, I didn't think it was a good idea. It would have been like selling my kid."
"You always look so deeply into things like that." She mentioned. Mark shrugged, stirring his drink, the clinking of the spoon somehow keeping him awake and attentive.
"He used to tell me that all the time." He looked up at her, and the locking of their eyes was inevitable. Again, Mark felt that shift. A lurching somewhere that he didn't recognize. Mimi's brown eyes growled and her apathetic look turned to bitter and hateful.
"Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore, do you..." She snapped scornfully, her deep, sultry voice replaced by someone's that Mark didn't recognize.
"No. I suppose I don't." He sighed, not wanting to appease her. He wanted to shake her and tell her that her lover may have been dead, but it wasn't the end of him. "You know, Mimi...Roger didn't want to go." His words were quiet, almost inaudible to anyone unless they had been giving the filmmaker their absolute attention.
"How would you know?" Mimi asked spitefully. "You just got here two months ago."
The words hit Mark like a slap across the face. He looked sharply up at Mimi, insulted by her condemnation of his decision to leave. He inhaled, leaning forward in his seat.
"What does that mean?" He asked calmly, searching her face for something to answer him.
"It means that you weren't here when he started getting sick. You left as soon as I got better, you were gone by May. I watched him deteriorate while you were whoring off your precious film. He could barely walk by the fourth of July. He was bedridden on Halloween. He couldn't come out of his room for Christmas. He was dying when you came back for New Years..." She accused, her hands shaking with every word.
"And he was dead by Easter." Mark shot back, angered now. "I know, Mimi. I know everything that happened to him. I came back in January, because that's when you decided to call me and tell me about him."
"Last I checked, the phone worked both ways, Mark. And you came back because you couldn't handle the guilt of staying there while he died. Not because you wanted to be with him as much as you could while he was still here. Who held his hand when he was dying, Mark? It wasn't you..." A tear spilled from her eye without a sound from her mouth. Mark forced himself to swallow hard before he spoke again.
"Mimi, I was there. I was there through it all, before you were. I was there for the drugs, the nights that he would wander around the streets until all hours and come home completely obliterated. I would throw out empty stashes and used needles so he wouldn't get something like the disease that killed him. I would check on him and make sure he was alive. I would shove *my* fingers down his throat when he took too much, Mimi. Don't talk to me about holding someone's hand when they're almost dead. I dealt with his withdrawal. I locked the door and barricaded him in while he swore at me and screamed at me and threatened me unless I let him out to get another high. I watched him sweat buckets in the middle of winter. I watched him throw up anything he tried to keep down because of those drugs, Mimi. I was there when April died. *I* found him in the bathroom with a straight edge razor more than once, because he wanted to be numb again, and the drugs weren't at his disposal, and neither was she. I may not be a saint, but don't fucking call me a bad friend for what I didn't do. I did all I could to keep that boy alive for as long as he could manage. I loved him just as much as you did."
Mark inhaled, the flow of words stopping suddenly. He bit down on his tongue, stopping the rush of emotion before he could even comprehend what he had just said. He wanted to apologize, but he didn't owe it to her. He owed it to Roger.
"I didn't mean to leave him. I didn't know he was going to get sick." He slid his chair back. "I'm sorry. I'll go."
"No!" Mimi's voice echoed for a moment, silencing the small crowd. "No. You don't owe anything to me. Don't apologize to me, that just makes you a hypocrite, Mark. You're not sorry, I get it. But you owe it to Roger. You owe it to him to apologize."
"For what?" He asked, standing and almost towering over the still seated Mimi.
"For proving him wrong. He said you were numb, Mark, remember? After Angel's funeral. You *are* the one of us to survive. Do something about it. Do something for the ones of us who aren't going to make it another five years."
"Don't say that." Mark pleaded, his anger fading to a familiar desperate emotion.
"Don't ignore the truth. I'm dying too, Mark. So is Collins." She stood. "But Angel and Roger are gone. Do something for them, Mark." She paused, pulling her coat on. "No. Do something for us."