"NO! You're not gonna do this! I forbid it!"

"Forbid? FORBID! You can't forbid me to do anything, Roger Davis!" Mimi glared at the musician as the two argued down the street.

It had been almost a month since that Christmas Eve, when Mimi had almost died. She had spent the few weeks following that night in a hospital room. Everyone, especially Roger, had insisted on it so they'd be sure that she wouldn't come that close again. The doctors had finally announced the other day that she was stable enough to leave. Shortly afterwards, Mimi had decided to try and find another job. However, this news wasn't sitting well with Roger.

"I agreed I wouldn't go back to the Cat Scratch, Roger! What more do you want?"

"Mimi, you can't leave The Loft! You almost died, last month!"

"You were there! You heard what the doctors said! My T-Cells are still considerably high, considering how long I was on the street." Mimi tried to reason with her boyfriend, but with little luck.

"I don't care what the doctors said. You can't just go out and risk getting sick again."

"Oh, so in other words, you just want me to sit around in The Loft, not going out for anything? The way you did for a whole year? I can't do that! You know I couldn't survive like that! You can't tell me to do what you did!"

"Well, excuse me, Mimi, for being such a dumbfu…."

"EXCUSE ME!" A new voice calling out caused the augment to stop, as Roger and Mimi looked around for who had spoken. "Excuse me! Up here!" Looking up, they saw a young Italian woman with extremely frizzy mousy-brown hair, leaning out of a third story window of the building they had been fighting in front of, currently waving down at them.

"Hi!" The woman called. "Listen, not to be rude, but we've got a little bit of a problem here. You see, I've got a bunch of little kids up here, and I'm trying to get them all to sleep. But it's rather difficult when you two are outside shouting at each other. So, if it's not too much trouble, could you, maybe, take this fight somewhere else, or at least keep your voices down, and perhaps at a G-rated level? There are some choice words I don't want these kids hearing and possibly repeating, if you know what I mean. If you could do this for me, I'd be eternally grateful. Thank you for your time, and goodnight!"

With that, the woman closed the window and disappeared from sight. Mimi chanced a glance at Roger, and had to giggle, seeing that he was clearly stunned at being practically scolded by a total stranger. A second later, she remembered that she was still annoyed at him and turned to walk off.

"Mimi?" The sound of Roger calling her name in an apologetic tone made the Latina dancer stop and look back. "Listen. I'm sorry. It's just that…. I haven't forgotten what happened on Christmas Eve. I almost lost you. For a moment there, I did. I'm… just scared of going through that again. I know I might have to someday. Believe me, I do. But... I don't want to deal with it anytime soon. I'm not ready. Not when I just got you back."

"Roger," Mimi sighed as the two held each other close. "The doctors wouldn't have let me leave if they weren't convinced I was all right. All their tests showed my T-Cells count is still high."

"I know. I know." They stayed the way they were for almost a minute, with Roger occasionally kissing her head. "Come on," he finally whispered quietly. "Let's go home. Then, we'll discuss you finding a new job."

AN: Well, there's the prologue. I know it might sound weird now, but I wanted to start this story by showing what happened after the movie, and this is my first Rent fic, so please be patient with me. I promise this will start to pick up soon.