Disclaimer:  They all belong to the Jonathan Larson estate. :)

He always knew relationships were difficult. They always had been with Mimi, with the anger and the jealousy and cheating. And with April, certainly, the reasons too many and too awful to even think about. With Mark though, the difficulties did not come from heroin-induced rage, as the two women before him had so often displayed. The difficulties came from 17 years spent living with abusive and negligent parents, from a full year of taking care of a wounded, broken, and brooding musician, and finally, from within himself.

Mark had never felt worthy. How could he, given the situations he had been put through his entire life? So six years ago, one year after he and Roger started dating, he decided to take matters into his own hands. To make himself beautiful and loveable, desirable, and "good enough", as he so often put it.

It had started simple enough. So innocent the idea had been in his mind, and even on paper and a computer screen. One meal, then two, and finally three were cut from his diet, until all that was left of him was the skeletal frame of a broken man, unable and unwilling to be saved. The protruding rib cage was exactly that: A cage. Trapping the victim, the soul, a once loving and caring man, in the grips of a deadly, addicting, and yet necessary disease.

Roger tried to save him, had tried so many times, yet it seemed the situation was hopeless. Every time he attempted to tell the filmmaker that he was beautiful and talented, and, yes, "good enough", he was shot down, yelled at.. It seemed that Mark's soul was as scarred as the mutilated flesh of his forearms, as tainted as the blood in Roger's body. And nothing he said or did could ever make one bit of a difference.

There was only one thing left to do… Years ago, the pair had taken a vow. To be with each other through sickness and in health, to be with each other until separated by death. They had stuck together through sickness and health. It seemed now though, that one half of the couple was dying, and Roger most certainly did not want to be left in this hell of a world alone, without his soul mate, his Mark.

As the musician sank the razor blade into porcelain white flesh, ghostly from so many afternoons trying to nurse his friend back to health, he knew that he was doing the right thing. Like Romeo and Juliet, he thought to himself bitterly as the dark claimed him.

Hours later when Mark snuck out of his room quietly for a glass of water he noticed a trail of crimson running from behind the bathroom door, staining the beige of the carpet below it and the purity of the soul of whoever set eyes on it.

"Roger?" he called out weakly and tentatively, swallowing the lump of fear that rose in his throat. "Rog?"

No response.

Banging on the bathroom door, he finally realized, after many precious moments, that the door had been left unlocked. Opening it slowly, he peered in and winced at the sight before his eyes.

It had taken death to finally prove to the man that he already was beautiful in his own quirky way, beautiful in the eyes of those who loved him enough to die for him, and loved so thoroughly that suicide opened up as an option when he shut himself off to the world. Mark finally realized that in the eyes of the person who mattered the most to him… He was "good enough" all along.