A/N: For such a short little game, this one left a huge impact. If you haven't played it yourself then I would recommend it, heartily. If you're not up for playing it yourself, then there are some good LP's on YouTube to watch. It's an awesome little game, (and free, holy moly), with a great story and nifty characters. :)

Betas: SkyTurtle

Music:
Furui Ningyou (Old Puppet) from the Ib OST
Inquiry from the Ib OST
Memory from the Ib OST
No One in Sight from the Ib OST
Corelli La Folia from the Ib OST
Dining Room from the Ib OST

Disclaimer: I do not own Ib, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

…

Through a Crooked Frame

Raven Ehtar

…

Her parents always told her that dreams were one of the best things a person could have. When she asked what kinds of dreams they meant, they told her 'every kind.' The dreams that you have during the day that are like little stories all of your own, the dreams that you hoped would one day become your future, and the dreams you dreamt at night, that kept you company and filled your head with beautiful places.

That was what Ib's mother and father told her, and maybe they believed it. Maybe that was what their dreams were like when they closed their eyes at night, and they really did escape into a beautiful world all their own. But that's not the way it was for their daughter. Ib's dreams were not the happy, cheerful places her parents told her about.

Your dreams were where you walked in long, narrow corridors with ceilings so high they were lost in the shadows that clawed their way down the walls that were hung with old, dusty canvases. Dreams were where you went to explore the cavernous rooms and twisting side passages, losing yourself in ancient storerooms where the old displays were packed in crates or draped with ghostly sheets. Dreams were the places haunted by statues that followed you, paintings that reached for you, and sculptures that hid monsters. They were not things to be welcomed, but things to be dreaded, avoided, and it was many a night that she spent in keeping away Sleep and his pockets full of nightmares.

But she couldn't keep Sleep away forever. She was only nine, and Sleep was ancient. Eventually he caught up with her, as he must, and Ib would be left in the shadowed corridors, alone with the art.

The place where she always came when she dreamed was familiar; she knew it as a place she had visited when awake. It was an art gallery. 'The Gallery,' that her parents had once taken her to see an exhibition by an artist with a weird name. It looked very different in her dreams from how it had in real life, darker and more confusing. But at the same time she felt she could remember some of the dark twists and turns of the place, but she couldn't remember from where those memories came.

She crept along the corridors slowly, unsure of where she was inside the building or of where she was trying to get to. She wanted away, but she wasn't trying to reach an exit. She wasn't even sure if there was an exit. There was a vague memory that no matter how far she walked in this place she would never find a door that led to the outside. Lost, no hope of escape, she still kept moving, for two reasons. One was that she was sure, with the kind of certainty that comes with dreams and nightmares, that something in the corridors was after her, something worse than the paintings in their frames or sculptures on their pedestals. It knew her name and sought her out, and it would snatch her if it found her. So she kept moving, fleeing from the unknown pursuer, her eyes constantly roving, searching the dark corners.

The second reason she moved in this dream instead of hide was that Ib was looking for something. She couldn't remember what it was, but knew that she would recognize it when she saw it. It was something she had lost, something that was important, and… something that was important to someone else…?

So she searched until her feet ached with the miles she walked within the Gallery and her eyes burned from straining in the shadows. She searched while the portraits hanging from their wires whispered her name and the walls bled with paint, weeping for the souls they would never possess.

She searched until something she did, some action or sound or perhaps just going too far into the Gallery angered the hanging paintings. The women leaned outside their frames, their faces twisting into monstrous masks, their hands reaching out, clawing for her with long, wicked, painted nails. They shook in their frames until they clattered to the floor. Those women chased Ib through the hallways, half outside their paintings and pulling themselves along the floor with their arms, the hollow scrape of their wooden frames, a grim counterpart to the women's snarls.

That was when she ran. She fled down the endless corridors from the art that came to life, putting as many doors between her back and those that chased her as she could. She could never completely shake them. They kept coming for her, catching up, closing the distance until she felt the fingers close around her ankles, throwing her to the ground, the strength behind limbs made at the stroke of a brush impossible to resist—

And then she would wake, in her own bed, terrified and shivering beneath her blankets.

Her parents grew worried when they saw the darkening circles beneath her eyes, when they noticed just how tired she was every day, stumbling from place to place more than walking. Her schoolwork suffered, from her lack of sleep, her inability to focus. When they also noticed some little odd, inexplicable changes in Ib's behavior was when they talked about finding help for her. They were such little things, but Ib had no way of explaining the why's of them. Why rabbits now frightened her, or why she was certain that her dolls would leap to life if she looked away. She didn't know why lemon drops were the only candy she ever wanted or why when she heard another girl reciting 'Loves Me, Loves Me Not' while pulling the petals off of dandelions she burst into sobs. Her parents couldn't understand either, and because they were worried, she was sent to a therapist.

She was sent to him for help, but he didn't. He wanted to help her by making the dreams go away. Then, he said, she could rest properly at night, and everything else would clear up and she would be 'all better.' Except that she didn't want the dreams to stop. Not really. She didn't want to be frightened every night, of course. She wanted nice dreams, but if she never went back to the Gallery again, then she would never find whatever it was she was looking for. And she had to find whatever it was.

It was important.

So she went back to the nightmares. She didn't so the exercises that the therapist taught her to hold off the Gallery, she didn't tell herself while she walked the winding corridors that it was a dream and she could wake up whenever she wanted to. She didn't even try to will the dream to change and take her somewhere nice and bright, full of sunshine. She had something to do here, and while she wasn't sure what it was, she knew that to fail would be one of the worst possible things in her young life. If she ran away just because she was afraid, then how would she face any of her dreams again, knowing she had lost something so important?

For weeks she ran through the endless Gallery in her sleep, searching for something unknown but so vital that she would willingly face the corridors and their living art. Night after night she fled the portraits, sculptures and dolls while simultaneously searching every dim corner and shadowed byway for something she was desperately trying to remember, but which only teased at her memory.

Then when she was beginning to wonder if she was only imagining the need to search, if she should try to escape the dream as everyone told her to, she saw it. Or rather, them.

In the farthest corner of one of the largest rooms she'd yet seen, Ib saw them. They were in the shadows, but the faint, blue glow they emitted caught her eye and drew her to them. She came near, and crouched down to the floor where they lay to examine them closely.

They were small, round things, thin and soft and a little folded like scraps of fine cloth cut and left discarded in a corner. They were also royal blue, and radiated a soft blue light which, if Ib watched carefully, pulsed very, very gently and slowly. These were what she had been looking for, she was certain of that before her fingertips so much as brushed them. But it wasn't until she felt their velvety coolness that Ib realized what they were.

They were the petals of a flower.

When she brought them to her nose and inhaled, she recognized the scent that clung to them: they were rose petals. There was the faintest hint of some other smell beneath that of the rose; it was familiar, but Ib couldn't place where it was from or why she would know it. She also knew, in the same way she had known that she was searching for anything at all, that even though she had found these, there were still more to find. In her small palm she held four rose petals, blue as sapphires, but it would take many more to make a full rose.

She carefully wrapped the precious petals in her handkerchief, then slipped the package into the pocket of her skirt and carried on.

She went on with more certain purpose to her step. Where before she had pressed on out of stubbornness and a vague but incessant certainty that she was doing something that needed to be done. Now she had a more definite goal in mind. She was still uncertain what the blue rose petals might mean, but now at least she had the goal of finding every azure petal she possibly could and keeping them safe.

Her dreams continued much as they always had after that. She would find herself somewhere in the Gallery, an unseen something searching for her, the twisting halls wrapping around themselves so much it was nearly impossible to navigate without getting lost – that is if she weren't already lost – the paintings and portraits whispering to her, cajoling her, promising her friendship and affection if only she would stay forever. Ib would hide, would creep along the halls, keeping from sight and hoping the one who sought her had no idea of where she was.

And she would search, her eyes going to every corner, beneath every table, and around every corner, looking for more of the glowing rose petals. She would find some, usually only one at a time, though occasionally more in a small group. Once found she would take out her special kerchief from her pocket and add the new to those she had found before. They always stayed with her, the petals, the one continuous thread in a long, continuous dream.

Every time she found a rose petal, the portraits would wake, or the dolls would come to play, or the painted mannequin heads would seek her out, and she would have to run again. She would run and run until she woke in her bed, heart racing and sweat pouring until she felt like she could breathe again.

Sometimes, when she woke in a panic at the end of a long sprint from lifeless horrors, she thought she could feel someone in her room with her, the phantom presence of another person. She was sure it was the remnants of her dream, clinging to her like trails of fog as she fought her way up to consciousness, but it was still comforting, whoever it was.

It was someone big, taller than either of her parents but thin like a scarecrow. She could never see his face, but his outline was a little scary looking, ragged and torn, but she could feel the kindness radiating from him like the soft blue glow of the rose petals. His strong hands would hold her, stroking her back and her hair as a somewhat feminine voice soothed away her fears. Ib would slowly calm in this ghostly embrace, the feeling of safety overriding all others as the smells of autumn and faint cigarette smoke enveloped her.

After waking from a nightmare to an unreal comforter, Ib could go to school or stay at home without showing the least sign of her adventures from the night before. On those days her parents were cheerful, they thought the therapy was working.

In the dreams, her packet of glowing petals steadily grew, until she was sure she had found every one.

When she found the final one she stared at her kerchief brimming with azure softness and wondered, now that she had them all, what was she meant to do with them?

Around her the dream dissolved until Ib was falling free in space, only snatches of previous dreams floating past. She clutched the petals tight, but could still feel them slipping through her fingers and fluttering away into the darkness. Long hallways and endless stairs trailing away into forever. Creatures and shadows that chased her until her legs trembled and her breath was stolen away. Door after door that she tried all denying her escape or respite, so all she could do was run.

When the world came back, she was in the Gallery. But she wasn't in the Gallery, not the same Gallery she had been in, where whispers and shadows twisted the boundaries and monsters reached out for her through crooked frames. She was in the Gallery as she remembered it when visiting it all those months ago with her mother and father. There was solidarity to the walls; realness to the very air that told her this was the Gallery of memory, not of nightmare. And yet it was still dark, so still there couldn't possibly be anyone else in the building besides herself. Was she still dreaming, or was she awake?

Ib checked her pocket and the packet of rose petals was still there. She sighed with relief that she hadn't lost it, but it didn't help her decide whether this was reality or dream, and the oppressive silence prevented her from calling out.

In the end Ib decided that it didn't matter. She still felt there was something that she should be doing, and if she were in the Gallery, whether real or imagined, then she could continue in her determination to finish that unknown task.

Her feet seemed to know which way to go. They took her from what she thought was the lobby up a flight of stairs to the second floor. The steps, thankfully, did not seem to stretch on forever, as though trying to reach the clouds, but stopped right when they ought to. On the second floor were a few paintings on the walls, none too unsettling, a display of three headless mannequins wearing the exact same dress but in different colors and a sofa for some reason. Then Ib came to a painting so wide it took up an entire wall all by itself.

Ib stopped when she came to it and stared long and hard. The images within it were all hard to make out. It was hard to know where one element of the scene ended and the next began, everything was so twisted up and warped, blending into each other and the background. As she stared at it, Ib felt like she should know the painting, that she had seen it before, but she couldn't remember where. The painting presented a mystery. It was important, Ib knew, but it wasn't what she had been searching for all this time. The painting was separate, she was sure. The card beneath the frame said 'Fabricated World.'

Frowning, Ib reached up a hand to touch the canvas. She knew she wasn't supposed to touch any of the artwork, but something about this piece compelled her, drew her in.

She brushed the canvas with her fingers, and then pressed her palm against the rough surface. She left her hand only a moment, trying to remember where she had seen the painting before, when she abruptly jerked her arm back and stared at her palm. What she saw confirmed what she had felt beneath her hand: it was covered in paint, staining her with the colors of the Fabricated World.

Ib stared at her hand, wondering if the painting was melting, if she had ruined the artwork, and how she was going to get her hand clean when she couldn't remember ever having seen a bathroom in the Gallery. She wondered if she shouldn't just wipe her hand clean on her skirt when she noticed that there was less paint in her palm than there had been a second ago.

The paint was sinking into her skin; the colors were just visible as they traveled up her wrist under the skin and past her sleeve like multicolored veins.

Somehow she didn't feel frightened with paint running through her veins until she saw it again, edging past her collar and creeping up to her face. Then her heart leapt up to her mouth, and she swore she could feel the colors moving across her face. She could certainly tell when it reached her eyes, as her vision became patched with another, warped world. The world she thought she'd left behind in her nightmares.

Ib rubbed at her face, trying to wipe away the paint that lay beneath her skin and was embedded in her very flesh, but it did nothing. What she could see was still a divided world, mostly the same surroundings of a darkened art gallery, but with floating patches in her vision, small holes in the world that moved with her focus, like the tracers you got when you stared at a bright light. Through those holes she could see where the Gallery she stood in now transformed into the Gallery she was so familiar with. The one from her dreams.

As she stood in the hall, frozen before the Fabricated World, trying to understand, to decide what to do next, she thought she could hear something.

Ib's breathing hitched, then held as she strained her ears to catch even a hint of what she thought she'd just heard. There was nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat throbbing in her ears for a long minute, laid over the silence that filled the Gallery. Then, faintly, Ib thought she heard the sound again. A sort of rustling, or sigh, that seemed both very close and far away at the same time, like it was around a far corner or just beside her ear. It was an audible equivalent of what her eyes were doing, showing her something that was there, but not here where she was. It was a sound from the nightmare world she had left, a hint of the dream Gallery she had spent so much time searching for rose petals.

Then, the sound that made her blood turn to ice. A voice, quite clearly whispering just beside her ear:

"Ib… come back."

It was young, a little girl's voice, but there was a hidden menace to it that made Ib's heart seize in her breast. The girl was a threat, she was dangerous, and she didn't know why or how she knew it. She knew, without doubt that the girl who whispered her name but that she couldn't see was the threat she had always felt when she was in the Gallery. She was the presence Ib had felt, looking for her and that she had hidden from.

Mary.

And now she had found her, and Ib still didn't know what the last thing was that she was looking for.

Frightened and sure that the painting in front of her was not what she was looking for – whatever it turned out to be – Ib fled. It was so familiar, running along the dimly lit corridors, that it was almost comforting. Except that it was different from her dreams. Just as the Gallery itself seemed more real and solid then it ever had, her running had that same, indefinable feeling of being more real than a dream. Maybe she really was awake this time. It made the running more difficult, whatever it was. Her legs didn't seem to cover nearly as much distance as they should, and began to burn before she made it back to the stairs. She ran out of breath far too quickly, and the presence at her back became more than a vague feeling of being searched for. She had been found, she was pursued, and she was sure she could feel the breath of her pursuer on her neck, the snatching of fingers at her skirt and hair.

She didn't know when it no longer felt as though she were being chased down by the very hounds of hell, but when she stopped because it was either stop or collapse, the presence was gone. She was glad, but wouldn't have been physically able to run any further even if she had felt the girl's hands on her. There was just nothing left.

Bent over, hands on her knees, she sucked down breath after breath until her head stopped spinning and her lungs no longer felt as though they were about to explode. Every limb shaking, Ib straightened up again and looked around. In her mad dash she hadn't paid any attention to where she was going, only that she needed to get away. Where she was now was near the end of a short hallway, the far end a dead end with only one portrait hung on the end wall, a small table standing beside it. It was good she lost her pursuer, if she hadn't she would be trapped now.

Taking a deep breath and walking as softly as possible, Ib went to that lone painting. It was unlike any other in the Gallery, in either dream or reality. It was tucked away into a blind little alcove without any other pieces of art anywhere near it. It exuded a kind of aura to Ib also unlike any other pieces in the Gallery; an air of neglect, of being cast out. In the farthest reach of the side passage, a sliver of light fallen over its frame, this painting did not feel menacing as all the other art did, but rather it was… melancholy.

Like with Fabricated World, Ib was drawn to the painting, but unlike that painting the draw was all curiosity and a sense of remembering something important, not a compulsion. Even staring up at the darkly painted canvas, examining the color and curves made by the paint, she felt this piece was so much friendlier than the other. She looked down at the card with the piece's title printed on it.

'Forgotten Portrait.'

It was a portrait, but a very strange one. It depicted a man, younger than her parents but still an adult, with pale, delicate features and dark, messy hair. He looked thin, and his clothes were a little baggy; tan pants, a green cotton tee and a long coat, ragged and torn at all of its edges. He was facing out of the canvas, but he wasn't looking out at his viewers as they were looking in. He was sitting on the floor, one knee drawn up to his chest and his head bowed so Ib could barely make out his face through the curtain of hair that had fallen forward. He was sitting in what could have been just about anywhere, but which Ib was certain was a hallway, his back propped against one wall. It seemed strange that she would think it was a hallway when the man was wrapped about with green, creeping tendrils. The vines had neither leaves nor blossoms, but they did have thorns. And except for those slow creepers, Ib would have said the man was only sleeping.

It was still hard to think of him as being anything other than asleep. …just asleep.

He was so real looking; it was like looking through a window into the next hallway and not at a painted canvas at all. So real, so lonely and so sad, Ib's heart clenched to look at him. Despite the earlier experience with Fabricated World, Ib reached a hand toward Forgotten Portrait to touch the sad man in his lonely corner.

Instead of hitting against a surface spread with oils, Ib's hand continued on and through the frame, into empty space. Instead of feeling the roughness of a canvas under her fingers when she went to touch the man's cheek, she felt something like a sculpture: cold and smooth to her fingers, the perfect curve of the man's cheek but completely lifeless. When she brushed past his hair it was soft and feathery, but his flesh was like stone.

Without quite knowing why, Ib began to cry quietly, hot tears etching tracks down her face to splash on her shoes.

When she finally pulled her hand away from the portrait that was not a painting, sniffling back her tears, she looked at the little table standing by for the first time.

It was the kind that were designed to stand against a wall flush, looking like a round table cut in half, and stood on three spindly legs. There was only one thing on the table, and Ib stared at it, the never-seen-before-but-still-familiar sensation barely registering anymore. It was a small, delicate glass vase, the kind used for one or a few flowers to stand in, far too small for full bouquets. It was full of water, and only one stem stood in the water. A bare stem with no blossom or petal at all. To Ib's eye it looked very dead, and she wondered why anyone would bother putting a dead flower stem in water?

Tacked to the wall just beside the vase was another card, much like the one below the portrait, but instead of a title printed on it, there were a few lines in neat handwriting. From its position it was for the vase, but even on a second reading Ib didn't quite understand how the two related to each other.

"Sacrifice begets sacrifice.
One that is treasured can be returned."

Ib stared, and read the card again twice. It made no more sense the third time reading it than it did the first time. It was talking about sacrifices, and Ib knew what those were, but what would sacrifices have to do with a bare stem in a vase full of water? She looked from the card, to the naked stem, to the sad man inside his frame, coiled about with vines. What did these things have to do with each other, why were they all here together, tucked far away from everything else?

When she realized that she had been standing and staring for several minutes without moving, Ib felt abruptly afraid. Someone – Mary – was looking for her, could find her at any minute. Ib couldn't stay still for too long, she had to keep moving.

Ib turned away from the card, the stem and the Forgotten Portrait and began to walk away, back down the short hallway to the relatively open space of the rest of the Gallery.

She only got about halfway before she stopped in her tracks. No. It felt wrong to leave. Just as she had been sure that she had been searching for something important without knowing what it was, and when she had known someone else was searching for her before hearing the voice calling her name, she knew that leaving this hidden corner and its riddle would be a mistake. She knew, in that odd certain way, that this was the other thing she had been searching for. This odd collection of items, they were what she had been meant to find.

But if she hoped that the mysteriously certain knowledge she somehow had would also provide her with answers as to who was in the painting, or why there was a bare stem in a vase of water, or what the meaning of the card was, she was severely disappointed. Not a hint or glimmer of understanding came other than she knew these things were all important.

However, if this were the second part of what she was looking for, then it would make sense to bring out the first part. Taking out the folded kerchief of blue petals from her pocket, Ib opened the cloth so the color seeped out and laid it down on the table beside the vase. While digging out the kerchief, though, Ib's fingers brushed against something else in her pocket, something she didn't remember putting there. Curious, confused, Ib brought it out and gasped when she saw what it was.

It was a rose. A complete rose, as red as rubies and soft as velvet, its petals emitting the same soft glow as the blue, and smelling just as sweet. Looking at it, Ib couldn't help but think that it was too beautiful to be real.

And it was important, too.

In a daze, Ib went to put the beautiful red rose on the table beside the blue petals, then thought again and instead put it in the vase with the bare stem. The red petals seemed to wave their appreciation for the water, and to grow a little fuller even as she watched. It made the bare stem look all the more forlorn in comparison.

Looking at the two little residents of the vase, Ib noticed that the bare stem looked almost exactly like the stem of the red rose. Looking at it closely it did have a few thorns, hooked little barbs standing out to catch at careless fingers. They looked like… Ib's eyes darted back over to the false painting, to the vines that held the sleeping man captive. They had thorns just like the stems. Were they the vines of climbing roses?

So, she had a man held by blossom-less rose creepers, a mysterious red rose, a bare rose stem, a pocket full of blue rose petal, a vase and a riddle. Now was the trouble of knowing what to do with all of them. It might have helped if she had an idea of what exactly she wanted to accomplish, but she had no idea other than she had to avoid the girl Mary and that there was something to be done here.

She thought and thought until her head began to hurt and still she had no idea what she was meant to be doing, and she had a suspicion that until her unknown goal was accomplished she would not be able to leave. Out of pure frustration she snatched the bare stem out of the vase, intent on examining every centimeter of its withered length if need be, and in the process cut open two fingertips on the wickedly sharp thorns. Ib cried out at the sharp pain and tossed her hand aside, dropping the stem into the pile of blue petals.

She stuck her fingers in her mouth, but even that didn't stop the slow bleeding completely. What worried her more was how she suddenly felt a little weaker, more tired than she had been before. She wasn't afraid of blood, why would she feel faint from a little scratch?

She picked up the bare stem, and then saw that it wasn't bare anymore. There was a single blue rose petal stuck to one end, held there with a tiny bit of her blood. It was a little gross, but it gave Ib an idea. It was vague, the kind of idea she wouldn't have been able to put into words, but which she thought she could act on if she didn't think about it too hard and scare it away. The bare stem and the petals, the riddle talking about sacrifices…

Picking up the stem, Ib started to put the dead rose back together, arranging the gently glowing petals back into the shape of a beautiful blue blossom, using her own blood as glue.

It shouldn't have worked. She knew that, logically, she shouldn't have been able to put a stripped rose back together using blood, or even if she could, the result would be ugly and haphazard. But it did work, and each petal, as she moved it into generally the right place, would seem to move subtly of its own accord to just the right place and meld back into the stem. It was like magic taking place in her hands, the rose slowly coming back to life, and an echo of a memory told Ib that bringing a simple rose back to life had a lot more import attached to it than was immediately apparent. She was saving a rose, but her instincts told her she was also saving something more. She looked, from time to time, at the sleeping man, but he never stirred in his frame.

But even as she worked on the flower, Ib was growing weaker, much weaker than the small amount of blood loss to stick petals back on could possibly account for. Halfway through the collection of blue petals she found her eyes drooping and all of her muscles aching. When she paused for a moment she noticed that the red rose in its vase was wilting, a few of its own petals falling free to the tabletop. The sight made her heart rate pick up, fear shooting through her… she wasn't all that surprised by it. It seemed right that her rose would wilt as she brought the blue one back to life. She bent her head to the blue rose again, determined to finish, only one stray thought briefly disturbing her focus.

Why did I think of it as 'my' rose?

Blood from her fingers flowed slowly but steadily, the kerchief heaped with petals slowly shrank, and a glowing blue rose took shape under her hands as the red one wilted in the vase.

With every petal returned to the rose, Ib became more tired, her body slowly growing heavy and her mind sluggish. She wondered what would happen if Mary found her now – she was too tired to run away again. When there was only a quarter of the pile left, her fuzzy thoughts took on the drifting quality of dreams. In those wandering thoughts she remembered – what else? – walking through the Gallery. Except in the half-dream she wasn't alone. As she walked through the endless halls there was someone beside her, someone large and kind, who protected her from the creature that chased them through the Gallery and who comforted her when she was frightened, even though she knew he must be frightened too. In her muddled thoughts Ib was aware that she was remembering someone she had known, someone she had considered a good friend, and she wondered how she could have forgotten him.

It was getting harder and harder to put the rose back together, her hands were growing heavier, her head drooping down to mirror her rose – and it was her rose, she remembered now. It was her rose in the Gallery, an extension of herself and her life. So long as it was safe, so should she. The red rose was hers, while the blue… the blue had belonged to the man. The man in the painting, the Forgotten Portrait.

And there had been a third. Mary. They had all been trapped in the Gallery, had helped each other and faced the dangers to find their way out. Until Mary had betrayed them, and the man had sacrificed his rose – his life – to get Ib's back from her. Ib had escaped the Gallery while the man had stayed behind. As a portrait.

And his name was Garry. His name was Garry and he was her friend.

But if the card was right, then Ib could return the gift Garry had given her, she could save him by reviving his rose, even if it made hers wilt. It was worth it, in her opinion. She didn't want Garry to suffer any more.

With only one petal to go, Ib was preparing to return it to the rose and wondering if she would turn into a painting to take Garry's place, when a slender, pale hand closed over her fingers. The smell of autumn and faint cigarettes washed over her, and Ib felt her heart stutter, her chest tightened with sudden tears.

"Stop, Ib. That's enough." The voice was soft and gentle and so familiar.

Ib looked around, into the face of Garry, standing, awake, free of the vines and the frame and his fingers warm on hers, no longer hard as marble. A small smile was spread across his face, his dark eyes shining at her from behind his messy hair. Ib felt the tears try to choke her. The last she had seen him, he had told her to go without him, that he would come running if she needed him, but he had been the one who needed her. And she had nearly forgotten him.

He squeezed her hand a little, bringing her focus back. "Hello again, Ib," he said.

And then she couldn't hold the tears back anymore and threw herself against her friend, sobbing into his coat, wrapped in the familiar, comforting smells and his protective presence. Even if they were trapped in the Gallery again, at least they were together.

She would much rather face the dreams with Garry than alone.

…

A/N2: At some point I'm planning on writing a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' thing for Ib… dunno when I'll be able to get to that, or if more than a preview will end up here (formatting issues) but yeah. Something to think of! :)

Thanks for reading, folks!