I wrote this fic probably about five years ago, and it's been sitting on one of my defunct websites for about that long. Anyway, I read it and it wasn't entirely bad, so here it is on , with a few changes for reduced suckiness. Enjoy! Oh yeah... and I do really like the song... but it really would lose its impact if Les Amis hadn't died, wouldn't it? ^_^ BTW, I did not write the song or Les Miserables. Duh. I'm not making profit off this either.

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
A Les Mis Sillyfic by Winged Kamui

"He looks like shit, " Cosette thought as she walked into the coffee shop.

Marius did indeed look like shit. His black jeans looked as if he had slept in them, and he probably had, considering that he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. He'd been crying; his eyeliner made two black rivulets on his cheeks. His Doc Martens were unlaced. There was a row of empty wine glasses in front of him, even though it was only 10 AM. She ordered an iced chai and sat across from him. "What's wrong?" she asked, covering one of his hands with hers.

Marius took a drag on his clove cigarette. "All my friends are dead." he said mournfully. He pushed a piece of paper across the table to Cosette. "Here... read this."

Cosette picked up the paper with her long, perfectly manicured black nails. "Oh. Another poem." She'd been a victim of his poetry before, and it hadn't been pretty, or even very aesthetically pleasing. She didn't believe that his friends were really dead. It was probably just another ploy for pity, like that getting kicked out of his grandfather's house thing. Marius really could be so whiney sometimes. Bracing herself for a minute or so in crap land, she read.

"There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on..."

"Ick." Cosette thought. "This is the worst angst-shit yet. A pain goes on and on? Geez." To be polite, she continued reading.

"Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone."

She looked up. "Your friends are dead?" Marius nodded morosely. Cosette shrugged and went back to reading.

"Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about tomorrow
But tomorrow never came

From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
And I can see them now
The very words that they had sung
Became their last Communion
On that lonely barricade at dawn..."

Marius's friends were beginning to sound familiar to Cosette. "These wouldn't be those political fanatics you always talk about, would they? The ones that you went to that protest with last night?" Marius nodded again. "They're dead? Does that mean you're going to spend some time with me now?" Marius looked pained, but she ignored it. Marius always looked pained.

"Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain goes on and on"

Cosette rolled her eyes. "That grief and pain thing again... it really speaks to the reader" she muttered. "I'm feeling pain just reading this shit."

"Phantom faces at the window
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more"

"My god, it's Marius all over!" she thought. "The grief, the agony, the casual mention of the imaginary people he sees... doesn't he ever get tired of it?"

"Oh my friends, my friends don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more."

Cosette handed the paper back to Marius. "You want to know what I think?" she said. Without waiting for an answer, she clapped one had to her forehead and struck a pose. "Hand.. forehead... staple. You need to get off the agony and angst, Marius. You don't have the talent to write it."

Marius put his head in his hands and sobbed melodramatically. Cosette turned on her heel, and left in a cloud of clove smoke and vanilla perfume. On the way out the door, she noticed a group of young men sitting around a corner table. "Hey Enjolras," she said, sitting down next to a handsome blond man. "All of Marius's friends died. Go comfort him, okay?" The Friends of the ABC laughed and stayed where they were, and Feuilly bought Cosette a latte.

Seeing this, Marius became so despondant he sank all the way down through the mopey spectrum and resurfaced on perky. He re-applied his black lipstick and, grinning inanely, walked over to a table where Eponine sat alone. "Hey, 'Ponine." he said, pulling up a chair. "Nice boots. Wanna-?"

"Oh, yeah." Eponine grabbed Marius's arm and dragged him out of the coffee shop, past the quite alive and amused Friends of the ABC. They laughed again, and Marius was too ... excited... to notice that Cosette was sitting on Bahorel's lap or that Jean Prouvaire was covering his poem with corrections in red pen.

That night at the Dark Corinth, Prouvaire presented Marius with a musical arrangement of the poem, which Marius had to admit improved it quite a bit; the beautiful melody making up for the over-the-top angst of the lyrics. Cosette was a bit angry with him for going off with Eponine, but forgave him when he pointed out that she'd come in with Courfeyrac on one arm and Lesgle on the other. Enjolras was a bit late, because some General had died, but he eventually decided he didn't really care and showed up to teach Joly how to slamdance. When Marius woke up the next day in Combeferre's apartment, he decided it was all right because he had no recollection of how he got there, and he went on to write many more abysmal poems, and a few good ones by accident, until he decided the whole Goth scene was silly, hung up his fishnet stuff, and got a real job.