Nina slowly opened her eyes.
White, she thought. If this is death, then it's bright.
She lay still for a moment, then became aware of a cast on her leg and bandages around her chest.
What does that mean? Am I alive?
It was at this moment that the door of her room opened, and Mark entered followed by an angry nurse. "I'm sorry," he was saying, "but I swear every floor looks alike! Nobody told me there was no gift shop! I've been to hospitals where they had a place to buy toothpaste, I promise! It was-"
"Mark?"
He froze for a moment, then rushed to her side. "Nina! Oh, we were so worried about you! The whole cast was here, and they said the show last night was horrible because they couldn't stop thinking about you! Are you okay? Do you need anything?"
Nina smiled and took his hand. "I have everything."
-----
The entire cast was back within an hour after the hospital opened to visitors. They were reliving the highlights (or lowlights) of their terrible performance.
"Oh! And everyone was in tears all the way through A Little Fall of Rain! It was awful!"
"I missed my line in Lovely Ladies."
"When I threw the bag of bullets, I missed and got it all tangled up in the barricade!"
"Diana forgot to bring her locket onstage. I had to pretend she was giving me something."
"I fell off the chair when the stage started turning at the end of Master of the House."
"Yeah, and he landed on me!"
"But you dropped a plate during the wedding and it rolled down into the pit!"
"I tripped on my wedding dress and fell when I was rushing to John's side at the end."
"Rob's voice cracked during 'on.'"
"Oh, shut up, John! Your voice never stopped cracking."
Nina laughed. "How'd you do, Mark?"
There was a pause.
"He stayed here," John said, watching Nina's face.
"Really? You skipped the show for me?"
Mark's ears turned red and he nodded.
"You shoulda seen him! He was a wreck!" Ryan said. "And I mean that physically, too," he added, indicated the clothes folded in the chair by the window.
"Told you I'd get your shirt all bloody," Nina sighed.
"Are you coming back to the show?" Josh asked.
"Of course I am."
"Who are you gonna be?"
"Say what?"
Mark smiled. "Don't tell me you don't remember why I almost got you killed. You can have Eponine... if you want it."
Nina's face lit up. "Will they put my full name back in the program?"
"Your full name?" This was from Scott, who had not yet spoken.
"You don't remember... oh, you didn't join the cast till afterward! Nina's real name is Eponine, but it confused people to see 'Factory Girl' played by 'Eponine.' They weren't sure what it meant," Amanda explained.
"Everyone generally calls me Nina... my parents call me Ponine. My friends do too, but only if they want something."
The nurse from earlier that morning came bustling in. "Goodness, miss, but you have a lot of friends!" she exclaimed. Then, recognizing Scott, she said, "Holy Moses! You're Marius! ...And Javert! Valjean! Gavroche! Holy... what are you, miss, the world's biggest Les Mis fan? Enjolras! Oh, I didn't recognize you this morning, or I wouldn't have fussed like that!"
Everyone waited until the nurse had rushed out of the room to dissolve into fits of laughter.
"Eponine sounds good," Nina said quietly.
A/N- My computer is healed! The Inspector's New Groove got removed from fanfiction.net for some reason I can't quite figure out. I'll try to post it somewhere else and let y'all know about it when I do. And I finally started work on my threquel! Yay! Oh, and I tend to turn my stories into tragedies... you know, ending with a random "death"... although the death isn't always as permanent as one might think. Like Nina's was... you'll see.
RoseMisre- I'm glad it's not awful... I'm infatuated with Mark, so I had to keep going even after Nina apparently died... yeah.
Andi;;- Josh was Gavroche. Sorry to make you wait, but the computer fixin' man ain't as talented as we'd hoped. And even more interesting, the day we got the computer back my phone lines died! Someone's against me...
Elyse3- No! You've stolen my John! And Danica Enjolras kidnapped Rob... dangit... Now I got nothin'.
La Pamplemousse- I know... my friends and I always laugh insanely when a Beetle goes by... and we have no fear of other cars. We've decided that the only way we could die is by a Bug and with our beloved Squishy nearby. Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but whatever.
Danica Enjolras- Between you and Elyse3 I've got no senior cast members! And that just ruins my threquel... I like John and Rob too... I'll admit that I prefer Rob (just cos he's Javert) but John has a bigger part in the story.
nebulia- Ooh... hope I didn't get you in trouble... tell your mother that fanfiction is so much more important than room-cleaning! Or maybe you shouldn't... I said that to mine once and she got mad at me...
Forseti- Yes, Nina and Mark shall have their chance. Ooh... that might have sounded kind of... never mind. Now I'm scared I'm giving stuff away! Oh no...
TaRe-ChiBi- Was it Jon Jon Briones? As the Engineer? I saw him in Miss Saigon and absolutely loved him. And I liked Jonathan Pryce pretty well too, so it's saying something that I liked him more. I love Miss Saigon... I actually loved it before heard of Les Mis. When I found out they were written by the same people (which was after my Miss Saigon obsession had taken a backseat to LM) I was in a state of shock for about a month.
Sohara von Salienta- Well, the story idea for Words of Love had been bugging me for a little over a year. Then I finally wrote it out but I'd put too much into the characters for me to just stop there. So I decided that Nina didn't have to die... because I love Mark... yeah. I actually had a scene where the ambulance came and the dudes said Nina was dead, but I changed it for my sequel. Then I finished the sequel but had already come up with a character in the threquel who I really liked... so I decided I would write another story just so I'd be able to talk about him. But I definitely won't write any more after the threquel.