The first thing Charles has ever thought, wanted, wished for—began at childhood. At the words, speak to me. I’m here. I want to be remembered.
His mother never listened. His father died too soon. His step-family doesn’t even bear mentioning. Even Raven has grown distant in her search for independence. And still he waits for a sign. A connection he has never had before.
Charles becomes obsessed with remembering. He begins to study archaeology.
Remembering lives that would otherwise be neglected and pass through time like grains of sand in a desert. Nothing accounted. The thought, the hopeless vast history surrounding humanity, terrifies him.
He goes to Oxford. He graduates. Falls into the ranks of the other Ph.D. candidates around him. At twenty-nine, a year from finishing his thesis, he decides to volunteer in fieldwork.
That is when Charles finds the form buried in the rubble of Masada.
Carved of marble, strangely out of place compared to the other artifacts he had come across. It could have been created after the siege, rather than before. Based on the material, it seems Roman in make. He wipes dust away from the face and stares at blank eyes.
The expression has character. The clothing is of first-century Judean design.
He yells to his colleagues, and they pull the figure out of the ashes.
-
He works tirelessly to preserve the statue. The bags under his eyes grow darker, wearier, yet there is something sparked in his gaze that is more alive than ever.
“You’re taking this way too seriously,” Raven chides, voice crackling at the other end of the phone line. “There’s a difference between practice and undertaking an entire project because your higher-ups are too lazy to do it themselves.”
“I want to know more. Besides, it's a volunteer mission,” Charles insists.
“You’re a year away from finishing your Ph.D.,” says Raven. “For god’s sake, Charles, you’re almost thirty. Once this abroad project is over you might never see that thing again.”
“I’m not coming back to Oxford until I’m done with my notes. I still want to learn something,” Charles says.
Raven snorts. “You have fun working yourself to death.”
After the call is over, Charles sits at his workbench and sighs. He would be mad, seeing as he had sought the project out to prove himself. But she’s not wrong. He glances at the sculpture's expression, which tilts with a sort of knowing amusement.
“What are you looking at?” Charles mutters.
Obviously, the sculpture does not answer.
-
“I wonder why you were designed like this,” says Charles to the empty room.
The statue says nothing.
“I mean, I know it’s a bit strange, speaking to a historical artifact,” Charles continues. “But at the moment you’re my only companion. And I'm your only companion. And I believe you're incredibly strong to have preserved a piece of your culture for this long.”
Silence.
“I agree.”
-
The only way to bring a statue back to its former glory is to take a chisel to it. Charles refuses to consider it. An archaic, thoughtless practice, to think chipping away to create something more beautiful is somehow better. To think erasing history is somehow more important.
No. He will clean with great care, removing corrosive salt with a poultice. He will strengthen the marble with a consolidant. He will protect the figure with an acrylic polymer coating. He will keep the man exactly as the artist intended.
No additions.
Because really, holding the remnants of a people makes him nervous. He knows what the erasure of history can do.
Charles works himself into delirium to maintain the fine details of gracefully curved hands. Fingers splayed reaching for something in the distance. He loses sleep over it, mulling over thoughts of the symbol of a persecuted people who had always been at the brink of life and death.
He stares at the cut of the man’s jaw for so long that his vision blurs. He is afraid that reaching out and touching will reveal warmth. He thinks, with horrifying reality, that he sees the eyelids twitch.
-
Charles talks into the air as he works. The sculpture makes good company.
“Your creator was Roman, from what I can tell. He built you in the likeness of someone he saw.” Charles feels himself shiver as he realizes that the person this Roman saw was most likely already dead.
Quiet persists.
“It is terrible, what happened there,” Charles continues. “But you do not have to be a symbol of your oppression. You can be so much more. You can be a symbol of your people and their ability to survive, even beyond death.”
Further quiet.
“You will not be forgotten again.”
Sometimes, Charles wishes someone would tell him the same thing.
-
The next few nights are hell. Even if he manages not to fall asleep at the workbench, he dreams. Vivid, suffocating worlds that he cannot escape the next morning.
And when he dreams in that small, darkened room, there are days when he feels the heat of flames on his skin. He hears the cries of a nation. He tastes the salt of tears. And everything within a heritage is burning, falling away, until the ashes have become ashes once more. The final fall of Judea.
And when he dreams—collapsed from exhaustion on the job—there are days when he sees vivid, pale eyes and sharpened features. A hardened expression. Scarred skin that Charles gently soothes under his palms.
The man Charles sees is surely familiar, but he forgets the face the second he wakes. What he knows is that the man speaks in a foreign tongue. That he is as determined as he is clever. That he has known war all his life, rage where there should be serenity.
Charles opens his eyes to find he has moved so a cool, outstretched hand cups the side of his face.
-
“You must think I’m crazy. Most people do.”
Charles sighs into the empty air.
“I haven’t had many people willing to listen. Acquaintances, perhaps. Colleagues. But even Raven patronizes me at this point.”
Blank eyes stare back at him.
“And look at me now. Talking to a sculpture.” Charles laughs weakly. “It’s pathetic. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m apologizing, but I am.”
He gently brushes his thumb against the man’s knuckles.
“Sometimes I wish you’d say something back.”
Still, silence.
-
Charles startles from a dream to feel someone shaking him from sleep. Sunlight streams in through the windows. Still at the university, then. It’s his last day, he realizes in a shocked blur. The last day of his volunteer work. Before he has to return with a report on his findings in hopes that it will jumpstart his thesis.
Despite the jolt of guilt that strikes him, he realizes that there is still a hand on his shoulder. He turns to see what colleague had tried to get his attention.
Grey eyes stare back at him, intense.
“You’re—” stutters Charles. He pushes his hair out of his face. “You—”
There is a missing space in the small room, now filled with the warm orange glow of dawn. The shades are drawn. Charles never leaves them that way.
“Thank you,” says the other inhabitant of the room, softly. “For returning me to my people. For promising to remember.”
And it hits Charles all at once that what is missing is right in front of him. With a steely gaze and unnervingly calm expression. The anger is there, buried somewhere, but above it is a sheen of sincerity. Charles is not used to that.
“Of course,” mumbles Charles, unsure of what else to say.
He has no idea how the statue turned into a living, breathing human in the first place. But he’s far too dazed to register anything beyond the giddy joy of knowing someone. Of wanting to be known.
“My name is Erik,” says the man, noticing Charles’ hesitance, “and I assure you, you are far from alone.”
The sentence should be chilling. To see what was once cool marble become flesh and blood. But the words wash over Charles, and he knows it’s a reassurance.