find_rightbrain: (RENT: Mark angst)
[personal profile] find_rightbrain
Title: And When You're Gone
Characters/Pairing: Mark
Word Count: 632
Rating: PG
Summary: Birth and death dates and a name. Was that really all there was left?
Notes: Written for [livejournal.com profile] speed_rent challenge #83. AU in which Roger never came back from Santa Fe.
Disclaimer: I do not own Rent, and I'm extremely unlikely ever to. Shiny?

It seemed to Mark there was something cold and distant about the New Mexico sun, as illogical as that sounded. But this sun didn't seem to touch him, didn't seem completely real, even, like it didn't belong to the same reality as he did. This sun brought light, but no warmth.

Maybe, Mark thought as he parked the car by the curb, this wasn't real. Maybe it was a dream or some horrible construction of his imagination, and maybe he would wake up and come to his senses and find himself back in New York, back in the loft, and Roger would be there, and never have left at all. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Except this had all lasted too long to be a nightmare. Mark stepped out of the car and shivered as he shut the car door behind him, though it was warm enough outside that he didn't even need his scarf, and couldn't justify wearing it in this heat, even to himself.

If he wanted to prove to himself that this was real, he could reach into the glove compartment of the car and pull out any one of the postcards from Roger, those he'd gotten before they suddenly stopped. Then there were the messages on the answering machine in the loft—the first few from Roger, and the very last someone else, someone Mark had never spoken to and didn't know, giving him the news. Obviously he couldn't reach those now, but they were as real as anything else, undeniable proof...

Mark didn't need proof. This was real, and maybe it was a nightmare, but if so he was dreaming while wide awake and there would be nothing to chase it away. The cemetery itself was stark and too bright in the sunlight, everything in such sharp relief that it hurt. Just a chain link fence separating the cemetery from the street, and past the fence headstones among the withered grass that couldn't survive the heat and, it seemed, no one had bothered to tend. A few bent trees, some sad-looking flowers beside a few graves, all drooping or dead altogether. Still and silent, no movement, and just the sound of passing cars and the buzz of some insect in the heat—and Mark still felt cold, like some frozen thing had settled about his heart and refused to be shaken off.

The gates to the cemetery stood open, plain and chain link like the fence itself. Mark sighed and stepped through them, his feet crunching on the dried grass, and he couldn't ignore the tension knotting his shoulders, the fear and the hesitation… Maybe he didn't want to be here. Then again, if he'd driven two thousand miles and just turned around, left… No, he couldn't do that.

It didn't take him long to find it—not a headstone, just a metal plaque on the ground, the day he was born, the day he died, and his name.

ROGER DAVIS. All in bold capital letters, and to Mark that seemed in sharper relief than anything else around him, and he couldn't look away. There weren't any flowers here, just the bare grave, and the withered grass on top of it.

Mark grimaced and folded his legs, half-falling on the way down to sit beside the grave, run his fingers over Roger's name, engraved in the metal. Roger Davis. Birth and death dates, and a name. Was that really all there was left, here in this hot, dried out place where Mark felt so cold, far away from home and the people who'd cared about him, who'd loved him?

Maybe. And why did it seem like, since Roger left—and even more since he died—Mark could find no definitive answers to his questions, only perhaps and maybe?

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