Work Text:
There’s a statue in the woods behind their house.
Even in dreams, Cleo can see it– aged marble standing tall, towering over them like a monolith. Creeping vines and heart-shaped ivy try to climb it from the base up, reaching for the sun.
This is where it stays, hidden within the woods, within a clearing. It is not far from Cleo’s home, just a short trek away. They discovered it while gathering firewood.
Cleo tosses and turns on their bed, and they wish that they hadn’t.
Their hands clench, a patchwork of cool skin and exposed bone. They stare up at the ceiling, a dragging heaviness in their skull, exhaustion in their eyes. And yet sleep doesn’t come, hasn’t in a long while– so Cleo sighs, flicking their lamp back on.
No point forcing it.
It’s habit that brings them to their workshop, an organized mess of crafts, tools and various projects. Sewing kits tucked into cabinets, half-formed sculptures. A landscape painting left out to dry. Cleo traces a hand over their workbench, tapping skeletal fingers on the smooth surface, thinking.
Hm.
There’s a click of a latch. Cleo pulls out a block of wood, gathers their tools.
This should do.
For a moment, Cleo considers sketching. Map out what to do. But as they make their first cuts, chipping away at the block, each schk and scrape of metal against wood… Yeah, no, they really can’t be bothered, can they.
Exhausted as they are, their lips twitch into a smile.
It feels like muscle memory– woodchips a growing heap around them, the weight of their tools under steady hands. Slowly, carefully, the block begins to morph, taking another shape.
Cleo lets their mind drift.
The funny thing is— though, if they think about it for too long, it sours rather fast— they don’t remember being an artist. They don’t remember much of anything, to be honest. It feels like there’s years of it, though, embedded deep in their bones– decades of brush strokes, an eye for color. It’s woven into their skin, stitched into their being and yet when they delve deeper, search for memories to back up the familiarity–
Nothing. Nothing but void.
They let out a slow, steady breath.
Memories are strange, Cleo finds. Because they can feel the absence of them, like a house once-loved, devoid of furniture. They see the outlines of what once was and now isn’t, where the surface is lighter than its surroundings, a ghost of a shape.
But as they try to remember the details, imagine what is missing– there is nothing to fill in the gaps, lines drawn in the sand and washed away by the sea. And yet they can feel the layout in their bones, trace it with each step. A table here, a couch there. Walking paths around empty space.
Cleo pauses, tilting the wooden piece this way and that. As their eyes refocus, mind coming back to the present, they see that it looks exactly like–
Cleo recoils, dropping it like it burns.
With terse breaths they unlock another chest, filled with unfinished projects– they stuff it down, burying it deep under the mass, their skin cold and palms clammy. Hissed curses seep from their teeth. They slam the lid down with a thud.
“I…” Cleo mutters, arms shaking where they’re braced against the chest. Their eyes screw shut. “I need a break.”
(Buried deep into the shadows, a carved wooden head. It is rougher, less detailed than its marble counterpart. Crude, but the same.)
—
There are a lot of things Cleo doesn’t remember, could fill a whole novel (or, they suppose, not.) with it. But there is a certain point in which their memories are clear, vivid and untouched by fog.
It starts with darkness.
Cleo remembers choking, the suffocating weight pressing in on all sides. They remember how it felt to claw themself out of the ground, dirt caked under their fingernails and wedged where skin has torn and fallen away. Greedy lungfuls of air. They remember being blinded by the sunlight, shielding their eyes from it and screaming when they saw bone. In sharp clarity there was fear, panic, confusion– wild orange hair falling in front of their face.
They looked down. A key sat hanging around their neck.
They were in tattered, rotted clothing, and their skin is a patchwork of mottled shades of grey. Cleo screamed again, but the sound grated against their throat. Lightheaded with emotion, they wonder when the last time they’d drank anything was.
Their stomach twists something fierce, a stabbing, white-hot pain.
It took too long for them to realize they were in a garden. Somebody’s garden.
Nowhere else to go, they wobbled as they stood, stumbling on weak legs. They knocked on a nearby door, a painted thing at the side of the house.
Nobody answered. They tried again.
And again.
And again.
Voice hoarse, they called for help, dirt-stained hands shaking on the doorknob. “I won’t hurt you,” They promised, “I’m just– I need help.”
No response.
Their hand trembled, “Please, just let me–”
Their hand twisted the doorknob, and the door opened a crack. Cleo stopped.
“Oh.”
Cleo would like to pretend that they didn’t just. Let themself in. They would very much love to act like they’d had a moral dilemma about it beforehand, paused before they went past the door frame. Sure would make them seem less like a house breaking thief.
…But, well. Doesn’t matter.
They entered the house, zero hesitation.
It’s not that they weren’t afraid of getting caught– they very much were. But it’s forgotten in the haze of pure hunger, of thirst. They were supposed to be in and out.
But most of the storage comes up empty, devoid of bread or– or anything. They checked the drawers, the cabinets, and the shelves. A thought hits them, through the blur of roiling pain, and they check one of the locked chests–
The key.
Cleo yanks it from their neck, hears the click as it unlocks–
And there it was– emergency supplies, stuffed themself full with it. And they drank, drank, and drank.
At the bottom of the chest, sits a golden, handheld clock. Huh.
Something about it calls to them, beckoning them with its sheen– they pocket it without much thought.
It only hits them after they’re done.
Cleo paused, looking down at the key. Why would they have this, if…
Their legs still felt shaky, though the adrenaline had long passed. (Now, Cleo has learned to live with it– atrophied muscle and exposed bone, though not painful to them, does hinder movement.)
They walked through each room, taking it all in. It’s… Strange. Familiar, though they have no memory of ever being here. They treaded dirt onto the wooden floor. Cleo remembers feeling safe– yet the most lost they have ever felt.
There’s a workshop. Somehow, entering it felt the most like coming home.
Here, they found a name, embroidered into an apron: Cleo.
“Is that me?” They asked. They tested it, rolling it around their tongue, “Cleo…”
It’s as good a name as any, isn’t it?
“It suits me, I think.”
And since then they have stayed– each sunrise, they waited for the other shoe to drop, for the jingling of keys on the front door. For a shout as someone finds them in their bed. For something, anything.
It never comes.
—
The clock becomes a familiar weight in their pocket. It feels right, keeping it on them.
—
They dream of it. Not all the time, but often enough.
Marble hands cupped around a handheld clock, even the arrows, the little details surviving the test of time. A cloak so life-like it almost sways in the wind, vines inching up the statue’s boots. The eyes are shut, though not tightly– Cleo imagines that it’s sleeping.
When they dream of it, it’s all they can see. The same statue in the same clearing. Though sometimes there’s laughter at the edge of their vision, loud and like sunlight. It teeters on the edge of familiar, a warmth in their chest that they haven’t felt in–
Oh.
There’s a hand in their’s, but they can’t see it. Can’t see it, but they see the way their own skin dips under the pressure, the feel of it is there. It feels rough, like a builder’s hands, just that bit smaller than their own. The touch makes their throat tight– who are you–?
The dream ends in white.
Cleo wakes up, and they find that they can’t stop crying.
—
…They had always known they’d come back to it.
Cleo stands in front of the statue, the skies painted a pink-orange hue. Somewhere, the sun is going down– but they pay it no mind.
It doesn’t make sense.
The feeling of… Something, in their chest as they look up at the statue, the colors of the sky reflected on the smooth surface. It feels almost like longing, like loss. But that doesn't make sense, does it, not when they've never even seen this person, known who they are. And yet as Cleo stares into carefully sculpted marble they swear they can almost feel warm skin under their palms, soft hair through their fingers like they've done it a million times before.
There’s a pang in their heart, tears stinging green eyes.
They blink. The statue is still, unmoving as ever. A pang of grief sits heavy in their chest, an aimless loss that slips from their grasp when they try to follow it.
They look down at the statue’s base, the small pedestal. Cleo sits carved into it like a signature, clear as day. But the rest of it, the top of it–
Cleo’s hands shake. It’s been ruined.
Crumbled, crushed marble sits in a heap in front of it, some pieces covered by ivy leaves. Cleo seethes with a boiling anger, nails digging into their palms. The person’s name would have sat there, they are sure. It would have been there.
It’s gone.
For some reason, it makes them want to cry.
(A flash of a memory, their first time finding it.
Firewood dropped on the ground, slipping from their grasp. The rustling of grass underneat them.
For the first time, the recognition came quickly– Cleo knows, down to the marrow of their bones, that that statue is theirs.
Awe comes, then horror.
Choking, mind-numbing, overwhelming horror.
Because they have no idea who the statue is supposed to be, the name forever destroyed. It strangles them like a vice, ice-cold fear dripping down their spine.
They have no idea who it is, but who it is feels very, very important.
And now, they may never find out.)
—
Another dream.
This time, they look down to see regular, human hands. Their skin is intact, no longer an ashen grey– no skeleton seen peeking out. But as they look their vision starts to blur, murky and bleeding together.
What–
In tight fists Cleo realizes they’re holding a hammer, and with a rush of air they swing, bringing it down with a crack–!
A snap, something crumbling. They still can’t see.
Crack!
Hit after hit, over and over. Until their arms strain with the effort, until blurry details devolve into powder, until everything stops hurting–
There is screaming in their ears, copper-tang in their mouth.
Hot tears roll down their face. It burns like the sun, like someone’s caress. It burns like a touch they will never feel again.
Another hit, more rubble chipped away.
Grief weighs like lead in their chest, dragging them down and gripping their lungs. It’s heavy as an embrace, heavy as a body next to theirs. Heavy as the empty side of their bed.
But through it all, there is anger– and gods, how it burns.
The forest could burn all around them, and it would only mirror a fraction of Cleo’s rage.
It feels like stars falling, like the world ending. Each hit is like meteors slamming on charred ground, burning, melting, digging into the soil. Their shoulders ache and so does their everything else, mind and body and heart torn into bloody pieces and turned into ash.
It drives them. It kills them.
A century, a decade, a year later, Cleo stops. Catches their breath.
Their vision clears, if only somewhat. Ruined marble stares back at them.
Horror creeps like bile in their throat, and all at once the fire is gone and they’re drowning, falling to their knees–
What the hell did I just do?
—
When Cleo wakes up, eyes wild with tears, all they can do is scream.
—
They return to the statue the next day, eyes sunken in and red-rimmed.
The morning sun is bright in the sky. The birds chirp overhead. The grass is soft, lush under their feet.
Cleo trudges towards the statue, feeling just as exhausted as the day they crawled out of the soil.
They stare up at its face. The closed eyes, the small smile as it slumbers.
“I can’t keep doing this,” Cleo says. “I need sleep. I need– to rest, to live my life, paint my things. I need…” They breathe in deep, breathe back out. “Who are you? If you’re so important, so– how could I forget you?”
The words tumble from their lips, hoarse and near-breaking. “Because I dream about you, you know. I dream about you. Sometimes, I feel like I can hear you, touch you again– and it’s all so– bloody familiar, but I can’t– I can’t remember who you are.”
Their mouth trembles, eyebrows furrowed tight. The statue only stands there, unmoving as it always has, as it always will. The leaves of the forest rustle with the wind.
Cleo feels themself start to shake.
“I loved you, didn’t I?”
Grass blades tickle at their legs. Swaths of clouds fly idly by. “I just want answers,” They say, to the open air, to the skies above. “That’s all I want.”
The cool breeze flows through orange strands, drying some of their tears.
Nothing.
…Honestly, they aren’t sure what they expected.
Cleo sighs, wipes at their eyes.
–Then, a bird swoops down, resting at the carved clock. Cleo pauses.
It picks at the top of it, a soft tapping on the marble. Their eyes drift towards the hands of the clock, squinting.
Three o’ clock.
Some thoughts arise: the circular clearing, the statue in the middle. The clock.
Their mind races, a sundial?
Cleo checks their pockets, feeling around for– there.
The clock reads, 2:41.
Close, Cleo thinks, they trudge around the statue, eyeing the shadow’s direction–
At the shadow’s edge, just a ways off to the side… An uneven patch of grass. As Cleo gets closer, the difference feels more obvious, a lump in the dirt. Their heart leaps into their throat.
They rush home for their shovel.
Lungs burning, stumbling through the woods, Cleo runs.
It’s faster than they ever have been, faster than a prey chased by wolves, rushing through brambles and roots like if they slow down it’ll disappear–
They dig the shovel into the patch, kicking it in deep. Dig.
Their muscles burn, a sheen of sweat on their skin. Dig.
Their hands tremble from exertion, almost slipping from the handle. Dig.
Wild hair clings to their forehead, eyes narrowed and focused on nothing but dig, dig dig–
Thck!
Their shovel comes into contact with something, something sturdy.
Sweat drips down their neck, just a bit more…
Cleo’s heaving as they set aside their shovel, wiping at their forehead.
They peer down into the hole. Cleo freezes, eyes going wide.
Is that… “A bloody coffin?”
As they stare down at the hole in shock, a sound makes them jump–
–Cleo swears they can hear someone knock.