CROSSPOSTS |FROM MY AO3|

ECAET (BUT MARIUS IS A HUGE DERP) | LES MIS

Yeah this was my first a03 fic. It's crack. Don't take life too seriously.

Joly, for the record, was actually concerned. Marius, as he said, was obviously depressed. So it seemed natural to, when he went out walking the streets late at night, not quite right in the head, after the incident of June 5th and 6th (it involved a lot of guns, broken furniture, and at least one heirloom Polish sword. That's all you need to know. Really), follow him. Just in case he did something stupid, or mildly unsafe.

Grantaire's motives were not as pure (not like they had ever been). He wanted to see how overdramatic Marius would get. And laugh about it, obviously. He was coming solely for the amusement, much to Joly's frustration.

In the end, everyone decided to come. It lined up like this. Joly, Combeferre, Enjolras, Jehan, and Feuilly were actually concerned. Grantaire, Bossuet, Bahorel, and Gavroche thought it would be amusing. And Eponine and Courfeyrac's motives were somewhere in the middle.

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There was only one living person in the Café Musain that night. (There were eleven ghosts, but that's not the point.) He sat down on an empty chair, and put his head in his hands. The rest of the people (that is to say, everyone who wasn't Marius,) settled themselves at the back.

"Marius, are you alright?" Joly asked. Obviously Marius had no idea he was talking. This could be put down to the fact that Joly was a ghost, or to Marius's impressive ability to not notice things (*cough* Eponine *cough*). Your choice.

Marius, either way, didn't answer. Instead, he slowly stood up, walked a few paces, looked up at the night sky as if it held something other than the moon or the stars, and let out a long, quavering string of notes.

"There's a grief that cannot be spoken, there's a pain that goes on and on..."

"Oh my word," Grantaire snorted. "He's actually trying to sing."

He kept at it, because he thought he wasn't being listened to. Or maybe he wouldn't mind if he had been.

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

Grantaire laughed harder. Marius, for all his worth, was not a singer.

"If that Cosette knows about how he warbles, would she still want him?" remarked Courfeyrac.

"Here they talked of revolution, it was here they lit the flame, here they sang about tomorrow and tomorrow never came..."

"Well, obviously," said Combeferre dryly, "tomorrow came, because the earth did not abruptly stop moving around the sun. Also, lighting flames in wooden cafes is a bad idea. I didn't know he could be this illogical."

"From the table in the corner, they could see a world reborn, and they rose with voices ringing, and I can hear them now..."

"That doesn't rhyme," Jehan cut in.

"The very words that they have sung, became their last communion at the lonely barricade at dawn,"

"He gets this from you, Jehan." Bahorel rolled his eyes. "He's being melodramatic. Like someone I know."

"I am not melodramatic! I'm appreciative of beauty! There's a difference!" Jehan protested.

"Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me, that I live and you are gone..." Marius's voice went up another octave and started cracking. He sounded like a choking bird, and Eponine doubled over laughing.

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

"Didn't he already say that?" Bossuet asked. "Because I'm pretty sure he did."

"Phantom faces at the window, phantom shadows on the floor, empty chairs and empty tables where my friends will meet no more..."

Courfeyrac shook his head. "If he had just added them to the barricade like I said..."

"Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me what your sacrifice was for..."

"Really, Marius," Enjolras groaned. "Maybe if you'd payed attention at the meetings, you would've known... but no, it was just Cosette, Cosette, Cosette..."

"Empty chairs at empty tables where my friends will sing no more..."

"We sang?" Feuilly asked rhetorically. "I don't know, but I don't remember us singing. Do you guys remember singing?"

Marius finally seemed to be done. He sat back on the chair, muttering to himself, and sniffled.

"No one cares about your lonely soul!" Gavroche scowled, in a passable but comedic impression of Enjolras who had said that exact line once at a meeting. Grantaire started laughing. Enjolras, for his part, grabbed the boy by his coat-collar and yanked him back, shaking his head.

That's when they all had the same idea at once, as friends sometimes do. As Marius made to leave, they all, coherently, forced themselves into visibility.

Marius turned around, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, taking in the scene. From Grantaire's repressed laughter, to Combeferre rolling his eyes, to Joly looking worried, to Gavroche climbing on top of the table to be as tall as everyone else. Everyone smiling with amusement- at his expense, probably, but his brain wasn't comprehending any of that.

Instead, he did the logical thing anyone would do upon being confronted with eleven ghosts in the back of a café.

He started to scream.

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-Fin-