This story is based on an idea by toppie from her Ib fanfic 'Blue and Yellow'. She gave me permission to do this, so thank you! Also check out her story if you haven't already, it's pretty good.
Enjoy!
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My Friend
Garry grunted as he fell to the ground, his legs had failed him, and he slammed his back against the wall hard, gasping for air as he felt his life dwindling away. His blue rose – his life force – was being ripped apart, and there was nothing he could do to stop his upcoming demise. He supposed he should be afraid, but really, he felt more relieved than anything. He was simply glad that at least he protected Ib in the end, that alone was worth all the pain. He continued to breath heavily as he slid down the wall, finally sitting down in what he knew would be his final resting place.
"Garry!" The girl cried as he fell against the wall, and she looked up and around the narrow and dark hallway they were in. The duo were pushed into a large toy box earlier, and Mary took Garry's rose in exchange for Ib's rose, since she was dumb enough to let go of it when she fell.. The red eyed girl bit her bottom lip in an attempt to not cry out, but it was a futile effort, she could feel tears slowly beginning to roll down her face as Garry gasped out for breath. She couldn't stand the guilt she was feeling. This was all her fault...
"I – I'm fine Ib," He grinned, despite the horrible pain he felt. His heart was beating erratically and continuously as it thumped against his chest painfully. Each breath he took was labored, and he couldn't stop coughing
"No… You're not…" She cried, "Don't die…" She reached forward with her hand and gently touched his cheek, tears falling from her face when she knew that his demise was inevitable. Her hand shook so badly, but she steadied it, and leaned forward, hugging him.
"I – Ib…" He looked down at the girl, and he gently wrapped an arm around her. The action itself taking much more strength than he would care to admit, "I don't want to lie to you, but…" He chuckled, regretting it the moment he did, since it sent a searing pain through his sternum, but he held in his pained cry, and continued, "But… I don't want to tell you the truth either, you know?"
She shook her head, holding in her tears, "Don't go… Garry... Please." She held him tighter, squeezing his body for all it was worth, as if it would do something to bring him back to life. She knew the futility of it all though, and simply leaned against his chest, crying against him.
"Ib, you have a long life ahead of you," He smiled at her, "Don't let someone like me hold you back." He reached up, and with great effort, he managed to pat her head, "I want you to be happy..."
"I want you to come with me," She muttered stubbornly, shaking her head, her tears beginning to soak into his shirt.
He groaned, closing his eyes, but he opened them short after to look back down at her, "Ib, I'm sorry, but I don't think that's going to happen." He coughed, and it again sent searing pain through his body. This time he could help but grit his teeth, and let out a soft groan. She just cried, taking hold of his hand as he let it drop to his side, his strength leaving him. He closed his eyes, feeling very sleepy. His head nodded forward a little bit, and his senses started to dim more and more, Ib sounded further and further away, and he felt more detached from his body than ever before.
"I'm sorry, Ib…" He muttered, feeling the last bit of his life starting to leave. His hearing faded, and the last thing he could hear was Ib screaming his name. He felt horrible, but at least she was safe.
"Garry?" he heard the girl's cry, "Garry!" He couldn't hear anything more, and he lost consciousness, and the entire world went away…
… For what felt like only a few seconds.
He could faintly hear some voices, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. He tried to open his eyes, move his hands, or even speak up, but nothing worked. He had heard something about this before, where your mind woke up before your body, but this was the first time he had ever experienced such a thing. Perhaps this was the afterlife instead? If it was, then it was a crummy entrance, and he was sorely disappointed so far.
"Do you think it'll work?" He was able to make that out at least, and it sounded like a young girl's voice. It wasn't Ib's distinctive voice, that was for sure, but it sounded kind of like… Mary? Was she in the afterlife with him too? No, did paintings even have souls to go to the afterlife? Did he have a soul? Oh god... He had to wake up soon, he didn't want to start have a stupid philosophical discussion with himself!
"Well, I guess it can't hurt to try, could it?" What was she talking about? Who was she even talking to? What in the world was going on? He dearly wished that he could move his body at all, but that wasn't possible. Maybe if he concentrated on opened his eyes, he would be able to do it. It was then that he felt someone placed their hands on his cheeks, and a peculiar sensation against his lips. The experience only lasted a few seconds, and then it stopped.
"Aw… I guess fairy tales aren't true after all." The disappointment in her voice was obvious to Garry, yet he had no idea what her objective was.
Did she just kiss me? He couldn't help but ask in his mind, since it was his only safe haven, what in the world is she trying to do? Damn it Garry, open your eyes! He again focused on opening his eyes, and failed yet again.
"Again? Well… Ok. I'll try one more time!"
She sounds determined. He thought humorlessly to himself, and he again focused on opening his eyes. He again felt the girl hold his face, and he again felt her lips touch his own, and he finally opened his eyes, looking directly into Mary's bright blue eyes. He watched as Mary's eyes widened, and she jumped back.
"Ahh!" She screamed, "H – He opened his eyes!" She landed several feet away, and looked fearfully at him, her blue eyes scanning his body, as if he were about to get up and start attacking her or something.
"Isn't that a good thing?" The doll beside her asked, glancing over at Garry and then back to Mary, "That means that your fairy tales are true after all! A kiss did wake him up!" Garry wasn't sure, but it almost sounded like the doll was mocking her... Why would it do that though? He thought everyone in here was on Mary's side.
"Y – You're right!" Her fright at him suddenly opening his eyes was completely forgotten, and she started to jump up and down, cheering the entire time, "Fairy tales are true! They are!" She picked up the blue doll beside her by its arms, and Garry allowed his mouth to fall open as he finally regained control of his body. In front of him now was Mary as he remembered her, the little girl that was roughly Ib's age danced around in her green dress, cheerfully laughing as she held onto one of those very creepy dolls with red eyes and stitched mouths and had that creepy blue body. Wait... That doll talked... That wasn't normal.
"He's looking over here!" The doll motioned its head towards Garry while Mary continued to spin around, "Say something to him!" Mary casually dropped the doll as she skipped over to Mary, and Garry watched as the doll rolled around on the floor for a bit before stopping.
She glanced down at Garry, and smiled, "Good morning!" She waved her hand, and offered it down to him to help him get up.
He rolled his shoulders, and did a quick once over of his body. He was still wearing his coat; he still had on his shirt and pants… He looked up, and realized that he was still in the hallway where he had apparently died… Hold on, didn't I died? He wondered to himself, and he just decided to ask aloud what the deal was, ignoring her odd quip,"Why aren't I dead?"
"Because I kissed you to bring you back to life, just like in the fairy tales!" Mary explained, her grin spreading across her face. She again shook her hand slightly, signalling him to take hold of it, and he finally relented. Using one hand as support, he allowed Mary to take hold of the other, and she pulled with all her might. It was oddly cute, but this had been the girl who had only recently tried to kill him, so he didn't voice it aloud. There was no telling what she would do.
"What?" He groaned, as he looked down at the girl he now towered over and asked, "Is Ib safe?" That was his main concern above all else - if Ib was safe, then he knew that his... death? Unconsciousness? Whatever, wasn't all for nothing.
Mary's happy cheer diminished at that. He noticed that her smile disappeared, and she averted her eyes to look at the featureless and black wall. She puffed up her cheeks, and pouted, "She left a while ago. It's just you and me now." Garry noticed her lips curling downward, and she blinked a few times to hide... tears? Whatever, he couldn't help but feel happy.
He let out a loud sigh, and he felt relief flood through him. Ib was alive and well! She got away to the real world safety! He let out a laugh, "That's great!"
"If you say so…" Mary whispered, quickly reaching up to wipe her eyes with her sleeves. Garry was actually starting to feel a bit bad, but before he could say anything, the doll walked over beside him.
"So, what are you going to do?" The doll asked Garry in a high pitch voice, looking way up at him. Garry was a tower compared to Mary, but relative to the doll, he was a titan. That was what made his reaction so embarrassing for him.
"Woah!" He took a large step away from the monster, almost a short jump since it was so quick, and it caused Mary to giggle in delight. Garry was easily ten times the height of the doll, and he was acting like it could do anything to him, "W – well, I guess I ought to return home too." Garry stated, unable to hide his blush, since Mary was laughing at him and since he reacted in such a way to the small doll.
Mary's giggling ended there, and she looked up at Garry, "No! You can't go!" Her hands balled up into fists at her side, and she again looked like she was about to cry.
"I'm sorry, but I have to. I have responsibilities in the real world. I can't stay here." He explained calmly, "Could you show me the exit?" He tried to smile at her, since she seemed to be becoming really distress, but he didn't expect her to start yelling.
"NO!" She screamed, "I won't let you go!" She pulled out a palette knife from within her dress, and her blue eyes glared at him, "Why does everyone always leave me? Ib left me, You're going to leave, he left me!" She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back tears, "Why don't you want to play with me?!"
Crap, here was the murderous girl from earlier – the one who had been chasing him and Ib. I need to do something to make her go back to how she was. He thought to himself desperately, as red cracks started to appear in the ground around Mary as she continued ranting about how no one wanted to play with her. He noticed the blue doll had pressed itself against the wall, appearing to be quite fearful of Mary right now. "Mary..." He called, trying to get her attention, but she didn't hear him.
"I'll make it so you can't leave!" She decided, "I'll-"
Garry took a deep breath and yelled, "Mary! Stop it!" He yelled that as loud as he could, his voice booming in the narrow hallway. She did stop momentarily in her rant and gave him a wide eyed stare with tears streaming down her cheeks, giving him just enough time to step forward and grab her wrist holding the knife, and he forced her to drop it to the ground, "Stop acting like a spoiled child!"
"B – But…" Her lips trembled, and he could see renewed tears in her eyes, "I – I don't want you to go… I don't want to be all alone…" She pitifully whined, when she realized that she couldn't do anything in the grip he had her in. She started to sniffle, and then cry, her hand going limp in his hold.
He sighed, and he gently got down to one knee so he could look the crying girl in the eyes, and he let go of Mary's hand, "What do you mean, all alone?" He wanted to look away - whenever he saw children crying he always felt bad, but he had to do this.
"Whenever people come in they never want to play with me, they always want to go home…" She whimpered, wiping her eyes with her balled up fists, "No one ever stays with me…" She let out a few choked sobs.
"What about your dolls, and the other paintings?" He asked, trying to reassure her in any way he could, finally settling on patting her head gently. While she did try to kill him earlier, he just couldn't leave a child crying and not do anything about it.
"They don't like me," She cried, "They're scared… They don't want to be friends with me." She was at least receptive to his patting, she she seemed to be calming down a little bit.
"Scared?" He muttered, looking to the doll that was in the hall with them, "So that guy's afraid of you?" He pointed to the blue doll, and it was then that he noticed that the doll was staring at him wide eyed... That was odd. Why was that? He shook his head, and turned his attention back to Mary.
She nodded, and cried harder, "I just want a friend… Someone to play with..." Her sobs renewed themselves, and she couldn't stop crying after that, let alone form coherent sentences. He didn't know what caused it, but it must have been from him asking her about the dolls and forcing her to admit that she had no friends in this world.
Realizing that him patting her head wasn't working anymore, he did the one thing he knew could calm a crying child - he reached forward and wrapped his arms gently around her, and he whispered, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize how alone you've been all this time." Perhaps for the first time in her life, Garry figured, Mary felt the warmth of a hug, and she tenderly reached up and wrapped her own arms around Garry, and she felt her tears coming on harder than before. She simply gripped his coat, and cried out all the pain she felt throughout the years she had been stuck in there, and the entire time, Garry had a firm grip on her. Soon, she wore herself out, and she was sleeping soundly against Garry's chest.
"Incredible." The doll muttered, wandering over slowly, as if it were afraid that Mary would wake up if it were to come any quicker. Its eyes wandered from Mary, up to Garry. It didn't make a move towards Garry, but it still really freaked him out.
Garry's first instinct was to desperately jump away and let out a scream, but he didn't want to disturb Mary, so he held his terror inside and asked, "Wh – what do you mean?" He gently held Mary's limb body as she let out quiets breaths, and he turned slightly to look towards the doll.
"I mean, you actually calmed her down from when she got angry. When that happens usually someone gets badly hurt." The doll explained, and its red eyes looked down to Mary, and then back up to Garry again, and Garry again had to suppress a shout.
"I – I see." Garry mumbled, "So… What's this about not having friends? You seem to be with her, from what I can tell." He unconsciously began to rub the back of Mary's head as she slept against him. Mary's little body in return snuggled a bit closer to him, letting out a content sigh.
"I'm only with her because she drags me around everywhere." The doll assured him, "If you stay, hopefully she'll leave me alone." Garry saw the stitches on its mouth curve upward, making the one frightening looking doll look downright demonic. Garry forced himself to calm down though, letting out a few breaths, which caused the doll to giggle at his fright.
Garry frowned, "I see… I'm sorry though, I don't intend on staying. Can you show me where to put her so I can leave? Can you take me to her room, maybe?" He didn't want to hurt Mary's feelings, but surely she'd understand that he had to leave, he couldn't leave all of his responsibilities behind.
"Leaving a poor girl who had just begged you to be her friend?" The doll chuckled, "That's quite harsh. She won't take that well when she wakes up." More giggles followed as the doll looked down the hall.
"I know…" He sighed dejectedly, "But I need to escape." He looked down at the sleeping form of Mary. She looked so peaceful that he again felt a huge wave of guilt come over him, but... he had to go. There was no other way he could get around it. He wondered momentarily if he was starting to go insane, since he was talking to a doll right now, but he shoved that uncomfortable thought aside and gently held Mary in his arms as he stood up. Was it right to leave her here and go by himself? Well… She was a painting, and that didn't make her a real girl, and she did try to kill him, but she certainly acted like a real girl, so much so that he knew that she would be very, very upset if she woke up all alone.
"Can you lead me to her room?" He asked the doll again, looking down at the blue monstrosity. The doll simply shrugged, and started walking down the hall.
"It's not far from here," The doll claimed, "Follow me." Garry walked after the doll, following it down the long hallway, and up some stairs at the end of it. Once upstairs, he noticed that there was a doorway with vines blocking it, preventing passage through. He looked at it curiously, and watched as the doll walked up to the door, and reached up to touch the vines. The vines retracted then, and the doll turned around to look at Garry. "This is her room, just set her down on her 'bed' and be on your way out. Just don't read anything you find in there, or the consequences could be… dire." The doll giggled like mad when it said that, and it went the other way, exited the room, and then presumably the building that they were in.
Garry shuddered at the thought of interacting with that doll anymore, and he felt relief when he saw it leaving, though he did feel a sense of foreboding from its warning. Should he trust it? He felt Mary shift in his arms, and he set his mind to the task at hand, going through the previously blocked pathway into the room. He went up some stairs yet again, and into a long narrow room, at the end of which was what looked like a painting, except there was nothing on it. "Interesting…" He mumbled, "Is this her original painting then?"
He felt his foot stepping on something, and he looked down, realizing that he had accidentally crushed some chalk. He looked around the floor and realized that it was an absolute mess. There were pieces of chalk carelessly scattered everywhere, all over were pictures of people that Mary must have drawn with crayons, since they were also scattered all over. There were markers, pencils, charcoal, and so many other things randomly tossed all over the floor too. He noticed pictures laying abandoned all over the place as well, and he couldn't help but instinctively want to get down and start cleaning the messy room. He held in his desire to do just that, and instead made sure to carefully traverse the messy path to what vaguely looked like a bed drawn on the ground. He frowned, and touched it, realizing that while it looked like it was a poorly drawn bed flat on the ground, the surface of the 'bed' was actually very soft. He supposed it made just about as much sense as the drawing of the sun 'outside' being warm. He gently set the girl down on the soft surface, and looked around. He again felt pity, but he had to leave.
That was when something caught his eye, he saw a large notebook beside Mary's bed, and he lifted it up, and began to flip through the pages. The first several pages were drawings of some unknown man, and above him was written 'daddy' in bright colors. He smiled at the picture, but his smile disappearing when he wondered where exactly Mary's so-called dad was, or if she even had parents, considering she was a painting. He decided not to think about it, and instead flipped through a few more pages, to a page scrawled with very poor handwriting that was in all uppercase, and it had even worse grammar.
"Today…" He squint his eyes as he struggled to read the words, "Daddy said he was going to go for a little while." He managed to make out. That was all that was written on the page, and it had been written with crayons in big bold letters. He flipped to the next page, and since there were no dates, he had no idea how far apart these were written from each other, "I can't wait to see daddy." He flipped through the next fifty or so pages, all of which said something along similar lines. Finally he came to a page that just said, 'I miss him so much.' He flipped to the next page, and realized that it was the girl just rambling on to herself about random things. Eventually, he got near the end of the diary, and read aloud, "I like visitors coming to live with me, but I want to leave this place and live outside, but unless I take the place of someone outside, I can't do that. Won't somebody come soon?" He flipped through the next few pages, which were just scrawled with 'Won't somebody come soon', over and over. So that's it. Mary just wanted to leave as badly as he and Ib did, but the difference was that she couldn't leave unless if one of them stayed behind.
Then why didn't she leave when I had died? He wondered. In fact, how was he even still alive? He looked around the room, and realized that he had completely missed that in the corner of the room, stood a vase with a blue rose in it, fully healed. Mary must have put it there, especially if it was in this room, but why? She could have gotten what she wanted.
"G – Garry…?" She mumbled, sitting up, and wiping her eyes. She saw that he had her diary open in front of him, and her eyes widened, "W – Wait! Put that away! Don't read it!" He turned around, and while dropping the book he surprised her by dropping to his knees and giving her a warm hug, wrapping his large hands around the smaller girl. Mary shook in his hold, but she stood strong, keeping her arms at her sides, and biting her bottom lip, trying not to cry.
"Why did you save me?" He asked, looking at the girl who had gotten out of her bed and stood there, "You could have escaped."
"I – I couldn't do it." She mumbled, "I wanted out so bad, b – but… I didn't want to kill someone to do it…" She whispered the last bit, and he heard her trying to suppress her crying again, though she was clearly failing, since she was beginning to sniffle, and he could see tears beginning to hit the ground.
"I see." He softly spoke, closing his eyes as he continued the embrace, "Thank you."
"A – Are you leaving too?" She asked, shaking in his embrace. He was quiet for a very long moment, as his thoughts went over everything he had learned that day. How she was a painting that wanted out, how she tried to kill him, how she almost did kill him, but ended up saving him in the end… He let out a sigh, and stopped hugging her, putting his arms on her shoulders as he looked her in the eyes.
"I'll stay with you." He told her, knowing that the best way to get a child to know that you were telling the truth was to do it this way. Mary got the message immediately, and her eyes widened.
Her jaw dropped shortly after her eyes widened, and she quickly managed to let out a very quiet, "R – Really?" He could see that she didn't seem to quite believe it, her wide eyes had tears pouring out of them, but he could see the intense desire she had for him to stay. She didn't want him to go.
He nodded, "Yeah. I want to stay with you. I'll be your friend." Mary wasn't able to stop her tears any longer, and she quickly hugged him, her breaths coming out in short gasps and she shook very hard as she held onto him. Garry simply wrapped his arms around her again, and held her as she let out a loud wail, and then she cried harder than she had in all her life. She was so happy to have finally gained a friend.
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Notes:
I usually upload stories when I finish writing them, but this is an exception. I currently have 7 additional chapters of this written (I still need to edit them though), so for now I'm not going to update this daily like I usually do. I think I'll update it every 2 to 3 days until I complete the story. Once I reach that point, then the remaining chapters will be uploaded daily.
Thank you all for reading!
CHAPTER REVISED: 6/25/2013 - Added in a lot more detail, combined a lot of sentences, restructured others, etc. This chapter had 1.3k additional words added to it.
