Disclaimer: Whoever the rights belong to it's totally not me.

There's only so many times you can hear one phrase, repeated over and over, until it's nothing but a meaningless sound, a couple syllables strung together with teeth clicking sporadically and tongues slipping over their own bitter intentions. Only so many times until not even emotion really associates with it, when a phrase just becomes another sound in the sickly orange backdrop of the city. When words are empty and the feelings are absent, she wonders what it'd be like to just not be.

The night Angel's dying, she and Roger sit on the couch, trying to talk. They're sitting there straining for some kind of conversation to grasp on, because listening to the sirens isn't doing much for the relaxing night together thing.

She can see herself all over again, trying to kiss him in vain, coaxing him to see her for once instead of his fucking music -- with Roger, if you weren't being ignored you were the most important person on earth, ever. With Roger, if you were being ignored you were less than nothing, absolutely.

She imagines how desperate she looks, taking him to bed. It's not so much mechanical as it is monotonous, not so much monotonous as it is flat and dry and not. Boring. Useless. A little painful, even, because he keeps missing and she keeps biting him too hard. Roger sighs after and kind of sits there, and she feels so much sudden anger she want to shout but sits up instead, reaching for her shirt. Fucking passive aggressive Mark, she figures, rubbing his fucking passive aggressive habits off on her.

If she were more blond, she remembers herself thinking then bitterly, more blond and lanky and dorky and blind and fucking scarfy, maybe Roger would want her just a little more.

She sees herself shrugging on her coat, opening her mouth to explain that she's going out for a while, but Roger just follows her to the door and says without anger or sadness or regret or fucking anything, "It's over."

Empty syllables. Tongue slipping over more empty fucking words. She nods without anything, stumbling into the black and white night. She remembers wandering for a long time, not having the energy to find a dealer and not having the motivation to go slip in a late shift at the club. Everything is so bland. So useless. So she wanders and doesn't cry, doesn't feel at all. The yellow autumn leaves look black and white and stupid, too.

She remembers slipping through the door at only a little past three. Roger's sleeping or pretending to on the couch and she falls asleep against the wall by the beads that mark her room off from the rest of the apartment. She remembers the streetlights making her skin look dark, highlighting the shadows of the knuckles on her toes, which poke out a little. She remembers wanting water, but her mouth isn't dry. She remembers sleeping.

It's five fifty something and she and Roger wake up at the same second, staring at each other over their excuse for a coffee table. She hasn't opened her eyes for more than one minute when the phone rings. Something, some cold-pitted, stomach churning trembling, some blinding terror grips her and she trips on the way to the phone, hands clammy and shaking and picking it up and sticking it to her ear.

She doesn't have to say a thing, because Collins knows it's her. Collins always knows.

His voice is teary, sorrowful, a little relieved, a little exhausted and a lot defeated. She knows she's the first one he calls because he still sounds shaken, a little trembly and a lot angry. "It's over," he says, and suddenly Mimi is thrust into a world of color and light and feeling and pain.