Regret

A/N: My first Rentfic! but nooo, rent's off broadway...just after I discovered how freaking amazing it was. Goddamn. So yeah.

Mimi was cold, so cold, so damn cold. She couldn't breathe. Couldn't stop shaking. Couldn't stop coughing. It felt like her lungs were pea-sized, made of iron, so that she couldn't them with oxygen. She lay on the bench in Central Park, shivering as the cold cut her to the bone. She was freezing, burning up, all at once. Questions pounded through Mimi's fevered, delirious mind, thick and confused with illness. Where was she? Who was she? Why the hell was it so cold? Where were Roger and Angel and Collins and Joanne and Maureen and Mark? Was the world spinning, or was she dizzy, or crazy? Was she back home in Spain? Was she in the loft? Where was her blanket? Was she at home with her parents and sisters? Was she dead or alive?

In a burst of lucidity, Mimi remembered. She was Mimi! She was out in Central Park, freezing. She had to get home! ...but oh no. Where...where was home? And why did she have to get home? She tried to remember, but the fog in her mind was like cloth, covering everything.

Mimi tried to push herself up so she could get home. Big mistake. The world spun, colors inverted, turned to shades of gray. She couldn't tell what was up or down, what was forwards or backwards or left or right. All she saw was spinning technicolor, then it felt like she was standing on her head, then suddenly grayness. Mimi curled up, tripped over a pebble, and fell to the cold, hard, icy ground as blackness overcame her.

Mimi, the inquisitive, curious four-year-old, pushed open her big sister Alicia's door. Alicia was sixteen, much bigger than her, and her room was so big and foreign and messy! Usually Alicia wouldn't let Mimi into he room, but she seemed so tired lately. She'd been all icky-feeling and sad, and not talking, and just staying in her room. And she always was cold and stuff. So Mimi had picked her a handful of wildflowers so maybe Alicia would feel better.

"Alicia?" Alicia lay, sleeping, on her messy bed, coated in sweat, breathing raggedly. Mimi crawled up on her bed and poked her. "Alicia?" Then Mimi noticed that her shirtsleeves had ridden up as she slept, and there were funny marks, track things running along the middle of Alicia's arms, near her elbows. Mimi wondered what they were.

But she didn't want to wake her big sister up to ask, so Mimi left the flowers on Alicia's pillow, and jumped off her bed, then quietly tiptoed out and closed the door.

Click, clop, click, clop. Mimi's heeled boots clattered along the street as she ran home from her shift at the Cat Scratch. Maybe Roger was home! Mimi uttered a silent prayer that he would be home. She missed him so much. Every time she thought of him, she felt like someone had shoved a fist down her throat, and she felt like she was seconds away from breaking down and bawling like a baby. Mimi wanted so much to go after him, beg for forgiveness, even though she wasn't sure what she'd done.

She burst through the door to the loft. Then she stopped dead. Not again.

He wasn't here.

It was like this every day. Mimi ran home like this every day from the Cat Scratch. There was a stupid little voice in her brain that was always telling her, "Maybe Roger got home when you were gone, and now he thinks you left, and he's going back." Every day the voice was wrong. Every day, it felt like someone was thrusting another dagger into Mimi's heart. Her shoulders slumped. Roger had been gone for four days. Four days that felt like a million years. Mimi thought she would scream and die if he didn't come home soon. It hurt so much, somewhere deep inside her.

Mimi stood on the balcony of the loft, eyes locked on the car. It was an old, dinged-up sedan, black, ugly. What made it even uglier was the fact that stupid Roger was leaving for goddamn Santa Fe in that car.

What was his problem? There was nothing with her and Benny. Nothing! And she was fine. Mimi's stomach churned with a painful mixture of regret, anger, frustration, and sadness. Why?

She did not cry, or scream, or run after the sedan when Roger drove away. She just stood on the balcony, feeling like her heart had turned to stone. She turned around, walked to her own apartment. Didn't turn around. Didn't look back.

Mimi's shoulders shook violently, as if she had a washing machine on spin cycle inside her. She sat curled in a corner of her apartment. It felt like someone was squeezing her throat and stomach, shoving a cold fist down her throat.

Mimi could not stop crying, had been crying for hours. He'd been gone for a whole week, and every time Mimi thought of him (which was a lot), it was like someone opened a dam inside her.

She'd cried herself to sleep the night before, woke up on a damp pillow, and burst right back out crying while she was getting some toast. Then she had just given up and curled in this corner, arms wrapped around her knees.

She wanted him to come back so, so, so much. I'd do anything. Anything! she thought. She just missed him too much for words. She loved him so much. Knowing that he hated her, didn't trust her for an instant, wasn't coming back...it was more than Mimi could bear.

Mimi shut her eyes and threw her arms over her head. Images flashed through her mind, projected on the backs of her eyelids.

Her apartment was too empty. Too many Roger-memories. It hurt too much.

She had to leave.

Mimi opened her eyes. Damn those memories. There was so much she should have done. So much she should have said. So many bad choices. She couldn't stand it. So she closed her eyes and sunk back into memory.

Images flashed through her mind, projected on the backs of her eyelids by some invisible projector. But there was no escape for Mimi, no escape from her love for Roger.

Roger, the first day she'd met him, incredibly handsome. Holding his guitar, lighting a candle. Flirting with him.

Climbing through his window at 10:00 PM, asking him to take her out.

Walking in the snow with Roger.

Standing on the table in the Life, kissing him. It was blissful oblivion, as she stood there on her toes, kissing him, one hand in his hair and the other around his neck.

Roger gazing at her with anger, fear, frustration in his eyes as he saw the stash in her hand.

Standing by Roger at Angel's funeral, sobbing in his arms. (A/N: I know. She was standing by Benny, at least in the movie. I needed this moment though.)

Pressed in a corner, blasted by a torrent of angry Roger-ranting.

Watching Roger leave, knowing he was gone.

There was no escape. In another burst of clearness, Mimi decided. She was going to go get herself a car. Go to Santa Fe, and apologize to Roger for everything she'd done. Then she would go to therapy for her heroin thing. Go to med school, become a doctor.

She tried once more to get up, but she could not.

Then Mimi realized it might be too late. She couldn't get up. Couldn't go. She was too weak. Then it hit Mimi that she might never see Roger again. She'd never be able to apologize.

This thought was so painful. Mimi curled up in the snow, feeling like someone had put a dagger through her heart. She couldn't. She had to! But she couldn't. Too weak. But she had to...

It felt like there was a car on Mimi's chest. Her vision blurred, and she knew it was over. The frost, her AIDS, the pneumonia, and mostly the grief had won. Mimi would never be able to see Roger and say sorry. It was over.

Then she heard crunching footsteps. Or maybe she didn't. Mimi couldn't tell if they were really there, or if she was imagining it.

"Is that..."

"Oh my gosh! Mimi? Meems? That you?" Who was that? Sounded a lot like Joanne and Maureen...it couldn't be.

"Oh my god. Meems? MEEMS!"

Mimi didn't care who it was. Didn't care at all. All she cared about was...

"Take...take me...Roger...to, to the loft." Speaking those words took all the energy she had. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, couldn't see, and everything went black once more.

A/N: You know what comes next ;D I might put up a sequel using this sort of concept, but with Roger, reflecting on his own life. If you guys like it.

So review please! And tell me if you like it or hate it or want another chappie. Thanks! PS: Other than that, next Rent fic is Mimi/Roger fluff to get over the angstyness of this story XD