Disclaimer: I don't own Mark or any of the characters from RENT. Nor do I own Queen or any of Freddie Mercury's gorgeous lyrics.

Notes: Okay, I know I've been on a major hiatus. This is a direct result of my laziness. You will realize quickly if you know Queen's music that every chapter in this story is the title or lyric of/from a Queen song. This is the direct result of having gone to see We Will Rock You in Vegas a few weeks ago. Actually, I was just listening to Queen a lot and then my aunt decided that she wanted to go see it like.. two weeks after I wrote this chapter. That has no relevance at all.. but whatever.

These will all probably be fairly short. I'm planning on doing a chapter for each character and then possibly adding in some sort of story later. These chapters are in no particular order chronologically or anything.. they are just as mixed up as my brain.

Enjoy.

11111

The last few months of what would be his last year at Brown University were excruciating for Mark Cohen. The pressure to excel was getting to him. He felt claustrophobic, closed in. But all that would change. Against the wishes that his family not only expressed, but threatened him with, Mark dropped out.

The consequences were dire but somehow seemed worth it for the liberation he gained from it. From Brown to the Village was his liberation. His pilgrimage to the new world. His roommate from Brown wanted to share it with him so he got in touch with a friend of a friend of his who had gotten him a cheap laptop a few years earlier and fixed the computers at his father's company. Apparently the computer guy and his friend were also looking for a place and the more people, the cheaper the rent. Mark and Benny went in with the computer guy (who was also a professor at NYU) and his friend who was in a moderately well known band.

This is how Mark Cohen met Roger Davis and broke free.