I recently became obsessed with Ib, even though I haven't played the game myself.
I watched all of Pewdie's Let's Plays for Ib, and explored through some of the endings. The Forgotten Portrait ending made me cry manly tears (even though I'm a girl, what?), so I decided to write my first Ib fanfiction.
A bit short and choppy, but I hope you enjoy, and please tell me if you liked it or not.
The painting of the sleeping man seemed to fascinate Ib.
When the young girl had first caught a glimpse of the eerie but delicately beautiful portrait, she was drawn in by the dark atmosphere of the colours and the regretful expression on his face. The vibrant roses that surrounded him were painted a radiant shade of blue (her favourite colour, she noticed with delight), and his silver-violet hair looked real enough to stroke. The artist who created this masterpiece must be really talented, Ib noted, for if the dreaming man had woken up, and had stepped out from the frame, she wouldn't be surprised at all. Truthfully, she suspected that a tiny part of her wanted the impossible to happen: she aspired for him to be unfrozen from the canvas, to be alive.
But she was being silly, she knew – he was just a painting, after all, a non-existing character that she shouldn't be familiar with.
"Why do you like that painting so much, Ib?" her mother would frequently ask her whenever she scurried off to her usual spot in front of the piece of artwork. "You visit that portrait like one might visit an old friend!"
But Ib would never reply, because she herself did not know the answer. Why was she so drawn to that particular painting, the "Forgotten Portrait"? Yes, the picture was breathtaking, and very pretty, but it felt like something deeper than that – when she gazed at it, some buried emotions or memories seemed to stir inside her, though she was never able to figure out what they were or why. And those fragmented emotions would leave as quickly as they had come, though Ib blamed them for her occasional hallucinations. Once, she swore she saw one of the azure petals from the roses in the painting drop and fall slowly out of the frame and onto the gallery's tiled ground. She had stared in shock as an unexplainable wave of grief and loneliness swept through her, like the petal had caused her a great deal of sadness, but when she blinked to clear her clouded mind, the petal stayed forever, unmoving, in its place in the painting.
Don't be stupid, Ib, she would sometimes scold herself, you're just being strange. You don't know the man in that painting and the artwork in the art gallery don't move. Now stop being delusional!
But, in the corner of her mind, a small voice whispered that she did know him, even though it was impossible.
"Mother," she'd once wondered, "do you think Guertena based the man in this painting on a real person?"
Her mother had frowned in thought as she folded her arms and studied "Forgotten Portrait" closely, biting her lip as she did so. "I don't think so, Ib," she replied after a moment, turning to glance down at her daughter. "It says in the pamphlet that Guertena didn't usually use actual people in his work. Why, do you think this man really existed at one point?"
Ib looked at the realistic roses decorating the sides of the painting, then at the man's face. "I – I kind of hope he's real," she'd admitted quietly. "I want to meet him, so that I'll know he's awake now. I want him to wake up and to open his violet eyes and live life happily."
"Honey, I don't think the man in the picture is sleeping –" her mother had begun before stopping abruptly when she saw her daughter's wistful expression.
How Ib knew the man in the painting had violet eyes never occurred to her.
The title "Forgotten Portrait" was another thing that puzzled the ten-year-old girl, and she spent most of her evenings questioning the nature of its name – usually, the only thing that managed to snap her out of her daze was her mother's call to dinner. The question of why this painting was called Forgotten Portrait always seemed to linger in the back of her mind, though Ib didn't quite mind. Maybe the man is dreaming an empty dream, and when he wakes up, he'll forget it? Or maybe, there's a forgotten secret inside the painting, one that no one will be able to uncover? Or maybe (and here, Ib was slightly more confident in her answer for an unknown reason), the man in the painting was forgotten by everyone else, their valuable memories of him erased from their minds.
What a sad thought, she remarked.
However, every time the cry of, "Ib! Where are you, it's time to go!" resonated through the art gallery as it was time for her to leave, Ib would take one last glance at the portrait and gently place a blooming, blue rose, as beautiful as the ones painted (that she bought with her own money, no less!), in front of the portrait, as a kind tribute to the forgotten young man. It was a silly gesture, an unexplainable attachment towards a character in a painting, but Ib felt that it was her duty to visit him and to remember him. She didn't know what the people who ran the gallery did with the roses, but whenever the elegant flower was brought and deposited next to him, she thought she'd imagined the lips of the man in the canvas quirking slightly into a smile.
And whenever Ib would start to turn away, to return with her mother back home, she thought she smelled the familiar and somewhat comforting scent of smoke, and the gentle taste of sweet candy on her tongue would send her scampering back to her parents with a bright grin on her face. But, most of all, the whisper of "We will meet again!" drifting through unheard ears and into her own filled her with some strange hope, and made her happiest of all.