Warnings: HIV/AIDS, mentions of death
I do not own RENT.
o
Aftermath
Chapter One: Invincible
o
Joanne used to believe she was invincible.
I mean, at one point didn't we all? But for the longest time Joanne believed that somehow, someway, she would always make it out of whatever situation she had gotten herself into. It was probably the people she grew up around that led her to this belief. She had never watched people fight for their lives on a daily basis, so she never thought she could end up as one of those people.
Until she met Maureen, and then Maureen's friends, and then the people that came to Maureen's protests. Then she saw what it was like and suddenly death was all around her. But her own mortality never really hit her until that day.
That horrible day when her life was forever altered in the worst of ways. That day when Maureen came home late crying, and crying, and crying so hard she couldn't say anything. She just handed Joanne the paper with their fate written on it.
The first things she thought were this couldn't be happening to us, how am I going to tell my parents, and how am I going to tell Mark?
She didn't cry or yell or say anything except to tell her still sobbing girlfriend that she was going for a walk.
She walked aimlessly for hours it seemed, letting her feet go where they felt like. She was attempting to avoid thinking, because that would lead to conversations she didn't want to have with herself. She walked until she saw a familiar face filming on a street corner.
"Mark," her voice cracked. He turned to her and she spoke again before he could say anything.
"Mark, Maureen and I, we're…we're positive." All the emotion she had been holding back suddenly crashed to the surface and she collapsed into his shocked arms, clutching to his striped scarf while she cried for the first time in a long time.
Joanne no longer believed in being invincible.
o
Words: 329
This was written for speedrent challenge 185.
Review, my darlings.
Dymond