Disclaimer: Smiles.
A/N: Playwrights are some damn amazing people. Larson, Wilder, Shakespeare… They all kind of just get it, don't they? These are people who really understood life and what it stands for. Thank God they went and wrote it down. If not for them, none of us would be spending so much time writing fanfiction. Which, granted, would probably have gotten us all a few more hours of sleep, but it would have deprived us from sharing our perceptions of characters and life through fiction.
This is the end of this story. I await the inspiration for the next.
Ignite
by Ex Astra
Mark walked home from the funeral grounds. It was freezing. His breath was visible before him; he watched it escape from his mouth and float away with the wind. Steam billowed out from the sewers, colliding with the frigid winter air and dissipating into the atmosphere.
Everything seemed stark and desolate. The world was colored in gray.
He passed a building with smoke emerging from its entrance. Mark recognized the club. The outside was of a rundown brick structure. Very small. However, a stairway in the back led to a vast underground room. Its concrete floors and walls resembled those of a warehouse. Needless to say, there was little ventilation. The smoke from the drugs never really made it outside, save for through the small front entrance.
Mark stopped abruptly on the sidewalk as something caught his eye.
Tacked up onto a bulletin board near the club's entrance was an old flyer. On it, in cheap black ink, was printed a picture of a very familiar face.
A poster. An advertisement for the Well Hungarians playing at that very club only a few weeks prior. Roger's calm face smiled brightly through the picture. His eyes reflected the light that had flashed from Mark's camera when he took the photo.
Mark pursed his lips together. A low growl began to course through him as he stared at the poster. Enraged, he ripped it down off the board.
As he crumpled it in his hand, he continued upon his earlier path. He started into a sprint.
_______________
Mark threw open the door to the loft. He slammed the poster he tore down onto the table.
He glanced towards Roger's bedroom. Thoughts clouded with rage, he stormed in.
Everything remained untouched. The sheets were still crumpled. Clothes were scattered haphazardly across the "furniture." Pages of lyrics were strewn across the floor and stacked up in piles against the wall. The guitar lay in its case, waiting for someone to play it and break the silence. It was all exactly as he had left it.
He dared only to touch one page of music. He picked it up gingerly and looked over the notes. It had been Roger's latest endeavor.
Mark let out a short, strained laugh. He had stopped mid-measure. That was Roger. Always leaving things right in the middle. He'd come back and finish it eventually. And he'd pick up right where he left off, never missing a beat.
One last, unfinished piece. One more thing Roger left behind.
Mark looked back towards the interior of the loft. His eyes traveled from the poster he left on the table to the others pinned up on the wall. They were all covered with pictures of Roger and the band, advertising gigs at CBGB's and the Pyramid Club.
As Mark returned his gaze to the incomplete song he held in his hand and the various other sheet music, something snapped inside him. Clicked. Everything was suddenly very clear.
He scooped up all the papers. He gathered as many pages his arms could carry. Not one piece of music escaped his grasp. He went out to the table and picked up the poster he'd left there. He rushed over to the wall and tore down every flyer, every advertisement. What good were they now?
What good was any of it now?
Mimi was there. She at least tried.
He grabbed the garbage can from the corner of the room. Their illegal wood burning stove. He prepared to drop everything in. The posters, the flyers, the advertisements…
And at last, Roger's lyrics.
He lit a match.
I didn't try. I wasn't even there.
Without a word, he threw it in. For the first time since he arrived home, Mark stopped. Breathless from his burst of energy, he simply watched it all burn. He looked on as "Your Eyes" went up in smoke.
He couldn't even feel the heat.
Where was I? I was working on that stupid script…
Mark took a sharp breath inward with realization. His eyes narrowed.
My script.
He strode over to the end of the table and picked up his screenplay. He clutched it to him, looking at the steady flames leaping from the garbage can. The pages began to crinkle under the pressure of his grip.
Mark slowly made his way back to the edge of the fire. His golden release. The flames reflected across his glasses and bitter, gray eyes.
The screenplay. The lyrics. The memories.
It all had to burn.
Detached and broken, Mark murmured to himself through clenched teeth:
"Zoom in… As I burn the past to the ground."