A/N- Sorry that update took so long, really I am, but it occurred to me that after this chapter there are only two more… NO! … and I started procrastinating… pooh. Anyway, I'm sorry for Nina's Mary-Sue-ish tendencies… really, I am. I just wanted it this way…

Obsetress- Haha I made you cry! Ahem. Thanks for all the e-reviews, though... they made me feel loved.

Sarah24601- Sorry these updates seem to take so long. This story only has one chapter and an epilogue left, so I shouldn't procrastinate so much from here on out.

nebulia- Nice words... May I use them sometime? Hehe.

H. Sibelus- As for John, I think Elyse3 claimed him earlier, but she hasn't reviewed since about halfway through the sequel. Josh, however, is certainly free, and will reappear next chapter. Yay!

Pink Velvet- ALAVOLUNTEDUPEUPLEETALASANTEDUPROGRESREMPLISTONCOEUR...

SuperCrazy01- Congratulations on your Mark! I think my Mark and I (if you remember from an earlier A/N) are in somewhere near the same situation... daggum shy people. Heh.

Two weeks after Mark's death, Ryan paid Nina a visit.

"Nina! I just heard the news… If you ever need anything-"

She stepped away from the door. "Come in."

"I was coming to tell you about the next reunion – it's been a long time… You cut your hair!"

Nina looked at the man standing before her. Ryan only a little taller than she (Mark had been a least a head above her) with thick, wavy, blond-brown hair. The thing she had always remembered about Ryan's appearance was that his eyes seemed to change color in different lights. They looked brown unless you were standing right near him, in which case they looked green. You could only see their actual color, blue, if you were face to face with him.

"You used to have glasses," Nina said.

Ryan nodded. "They made me look too old. I'll be forty in a couple of years."

"Me too. Mark's thirty-nine." Her eyes widened as she realized what she had said. "Oh my God…"

"Oh, Nina… He was such a great guy… He… I'm so sorry, I just can't comprehend…"

"Imagine having to tell your five-year-old daughter that she'll never see her father again."

"Daughter?"

"Yeah… she's adorable. John calls her 'Little Mark'… she looks so much like her dad… Five years old, Ryan, and her father is dead."

"And Jehan?"

"He's been awful… He and Mark had a fight just before… the last thing Jehan said to him was… was horrible."

"I don't… I haven't… it's been ten years since…" Ryan made a gesture of helplessness and put a hand over his forehead. "I just can't believe…"

Nina felt tears gathering in her eyes again. She'd been fighting them since Mark's death, trying not to cry in front of the kids. Even when John took Cosette downstairs and Jehan went off to his show she could not cry. She had busied herself with other thoughts, trying to ignore the silence of the apartment and the dried, brown roses in the vase in the dining room. To put away his reading glasses or throw away the can of flat soda on the table meant accepting that Mark was gone, that he would never use these glasses or finish that drink… But now, as Ryan watched at her with those odd eyes, she knew that she couldn't run any longer. Mark was dead.

Ryan put his hands on her shoulders. "Nina…"

Her eyes were so full of water that she had to close them, and the hot tears rolled down her cheeks. She blinked and looked at Ryan. He sighed and pulled her into a hug. "Just cry," he murmured soothingly.

Nina did. She cried for Cosette, who was five years old and fatherless. She cried for the look in her daughter's wide, blue eyes when she woke up that morning and had asked where her daddy was, and then for the expression when she found out. Nina cried for Jehan, who couldn't forgive himself for what he had said. She cried for the way he had locked himself in his room the next morning, and the how he had completely given up on having any social life. And then she cried for her dozen roses, brittle and dead on the table.

"I hate my life," she whispered.

Her head was on Ryan's shoulder, and at these words he stepped back, looking into her eyes. "Why? You've got two great kids, awesome friends… You spent the last fifteen years with Mark… and Nina… look at you. You're still every bit as beautiful as you were the last time I saw you, and you've had a child since then."

"Three…" sighed Nina. "I've had three children since Jehan. Two were born dead."

She felt herself crying again, this time for Josephine and Marguerite, and for the spell of depression Mark had gone through after Marguerite's funeral, convincing himself that the girls' deaths were his fault.

Ryan cupped her chin in his hands and wiped away her tears with his thumbs the way Mark had always done. Nina closed her eyes and let herself pretend, even just for a while, that these hands on her face were Mark's. Then he hugged her again. Nina kept her eyes closed. If only these arms around her waist, these lips on her lips, were Mark's. A moment passed before Nina realized what was happening. Her eyes flew open and she shoved Ryan away.

Neither said anything. Ryan looked down at the floor, embarrassed, while Nina stared at him with a mixture of emotions that she could not sort through.

Someone knocked on the door, and both of them jumped. Nina hastily dried her eyes and answered it. John was standing in the hallway with Cosette asleep in his arms. "Are you ready for her?"

Nina took the child from him. "Thanks, John."

"John?" Ryan repeated.

"Who said that?" asked John, apparently startled by the sound of a man's voice.

"It's Ryan," Nina muttered.

"Ryan? What're you doing here?"

"Marking the rounds," he said, his voice taking on an air of cheerfulness. "Fifteen year reunion's at my place next week."

"Fifteen! Egad, has it been the long?" John laughed. "Hey, come down to my place and we'll have coffee or something."

Ryan glanced at Nina, then left with John. Nina waited until she heard the elevator door slide shut. "Well," she whispered to the sleeping Cosette, "that was awkward."

She took the child to her room and laid her down, then went back into the living room and threw herself onto the couch. Her head ached. Faces spun through her mind… Mark… Ryan… Scott… Jehan… She leapt to her feet and went over to the bookshelf, returning to the sofa with a souvenir booklet from Les Misérables. She opened it to the center page – One Day More. There was Mark in the very center… Josh riding someone's shoulders, waving the flag… Ryan at the edge of the formation… John with his hands on Amanda's shoulders… and herself in the Eponine garb, standing just behind Scott. She ran her index finger over the little blotch of ink that represented Mark, sensing that she was going to cry.

Jehan arrived home an hour or so later. He was ready to complain to his mother about the taxi driver who had barely spoken any English, but he found her asleep on the couch. A souvenir booklet was lying open on the floor.

He sat down next to it, his curiosity piqued. He had never seen the entire cast of Les Misérables from when his parents were in it. Jehan flipped the booklet open.

There was John accepting his yellow-ticket-of-leave… some woman he didn't know as Fantine… a whiny looking young Cosette… there was his mother as Eponine. He was surprised at how much she looked the part. His eyes traveled down the page… there was Mark and…

Jehan blinked. Mark was standing next to another man whose face could not be seen, as he was turned to surveythe poor people in the background. What caught Jehan's eye was the man's hair – it was sandy brown colored and exactly like his own. He looked closer at the picture – it had to be Marius. The boy flipped to another page with a bigger picture and brought the book closer to his face. This man looked almost exactly like an older version of himself. He glanced at the name near the bottom of the page.

So that was the answer to the big mystery of his life. Mark wasn't his father after all – this guy Scott was.