Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
Author: Lady Vorgunby ladyvorgunby@hotmail.com
Title: Empty Chairs at Empty Tables
Summary: An old man laments his past, and the events that have led him there.
Rating: PG?
Category: Obi-anguish (I think that's a new category) Song-fic
Disclaimer: I wish he was mine, but he isn't. I also wish Les Mis was mine, but it's not. I earn no profit off this small thing, except the ego boost that comes with feedback.
Spoilers for TPM, and cannon.
Note: This is the latest in a series of fics based on Les Miserables (which is the musical I listen to most often, besides RENT, but I haven't been inspired by anything from RENT so far).
*~*~*
I can still see them, in the halls, the gardens, the cafeteria, practice rooms, library. I still feel the echoes of their presence, once so prevalent, I never took notice until it was gone. I felt it when they died. It was as if my world went silent. No more did I have the company of my Masters, my friends, my family. They are all gone now.
It's almost painful sometimes, the emptiness that I feel. After so many years, I thought I would become accustomed to the silence. For the most part, I have. But when the desert winds tear through the canyons where I have made my home, I hear in the swirling dusts the voices of those long gone, and they haunt me, because in no small way, it is my fault. My failure led to this.
But they are all gone now, passed into the Force, where they wait for me. And why? Why are they waiting for me there? Why did they have to die? So that "balance" could be restored? Did they all have to die for *my* failure of foresight? No. I would have trained the boy, no matter what the Force tried to tell me. I owed my Master that much. Not for the first time, and probably not the last, I wish my Master had been the one to train the boy.
Sometimes I hear them, talking of the coming storm, and the rising rebellion. Conversations long over, held in a place that no longer exists. The talk of whether or not to fight the evil, to not take sides at all. But there wasn't time for discussion; the storm struck without warning. Only a couple of us remain now, those off planet at the time, or warned by the Force, in my case, Yoda.
But I don't want to be spared! I wish to be with my family! Yet I sense Yoda's time growing short and I long to join my companions in the Force. But my task is not yet complete. There is another boy I must watch over. I pray to the Force everyday that when the time comes, my failure will not repeat itself.
*~*~*
There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.
Here they talked of revolution
Here it was they lit the flame
Here they sang about 'tomorrow'
And tomorrow, never came.
From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn
And they rose with voices ringing
I can hear them now
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On the lonely barricade at dawn!
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.
Phantom faces at the window
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.
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.