Intro part 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Ib or any of the characters


Ib muttered in her sleep, nuzzling into her pillow as she lay suspended in the hazy halfway point between dreaming and waking. Something from her dream lingered in the back of her mind, but she couldn't seem to focus enough to figure out what it was.

Something about a choice…

What had she been dreaming? The vague image of a robed man surfaced beneath her closed eyelids. He had been involved somehow, and yet she had no idea who it was. Had she asked him his name? Maybe he was an unconscious representation of something. Blearily, her barely-functioning mind tried to go over some of the things she remembered from psychology class.

Fear of the unknown maybe? Probably not, she didn't remember being all that afraid of him. Then again, maybe being overly calm about talking to a total stranger in a robe was a sign that you needed to be more liberal with pepper spray.

A slight creaking in the floorboards alerted her to the fact that someone else was in her room. Was it the robed man? No wait, he had been in the dream. Or had he? She was going to feel awfully silly if he was someone she knew and had just forgotten.

Ib was distantly aware of a strange whooshing sound, followed by a light weight settling in the palm of her hand.

Before she could give some very slow consideration to the sensation, the tip of her nose began to itch. In her daze, she wriggled it back and forth but the annoying feeling refused to abate. It wasn't long before she fell into the trap.

Seeing no other alternative, her mind did the only logical thing and told her arm to swat away whatever was causing the itching. The impact of hand on face was marked by a wet squishing sound and the feeling of something cold and moist splattering all over her head.

Now fully awake, Ib's eyes shot open.

"MARY!"

The blonde girl doubled over, her body shaking with laughter at the site of her prank coming to fruition. She clung to the side of Ib's bed to avoid falling over.

Groaning, Ib looked in her bedside mirror to survey the damage. Whipped cream had turned the majority of her face white, and several chunks had even fallen down her neck onto the hem of her nightgown. The only consolation she had was that very little had ended up in her hair.

"You know, if you wanted to wake me up that badly you could have just shaken me." She said, directing a grumpy glare at the other girl.

Mary was unable to answer, all of her effort being used to try and get herself back under control. She even had to wipe away several tears of mirth that threatened to fall from her eyes.

"It. Wasn't. That. Funny." Ib grumbled.

"Are you kidding?" Mary asked, gasping for breath with a massive grin on her face. "Your face was priceless. I wish I had set up a camera, even you would agree if you could have seen it."

"Is there a reason you did that, or should I just call my lawyer for assault now?"

Mary rolled her eyes, giving the brunette a good natured shove.

"Don't be like that." She said. "You need a bit of humor. If it weren't for me you would be the single most depressing person on the face of the Earth."

"I'm not depressing." Ib mumbled, half-hoping she would be able to go back to bed. "I'm just not all that good at holding long conversations with total strangers."

Mary seemed to take pity on her victim. "Come on." She said, taking Ib's hand in her own. "I'll help you wash it off if you promise to stop being so gloomy."


Twenty minutes later, Ib was seated at the dining room table eating a bowl of soggy cereal. While it wasn't the most creative of breakfasts, it was by far the safest. Trying to cook without a recipe and instructions in hand always felt like tempting fate.

Mary had already eaten long before she had opted to wake up her companion. Now, she was furiously scribbling line after line of writing on a piece of paper. Each one was another idea for things that the two of them would be doing over their extended vacation.

Ib's mother and father had taken a flight to some exotic resort. They had said that they wanted to have a romantic getaway, as well as a few other things that she really didn't want to think about too hard. While they were away, the girls would have the house all to themselves. It was an opportunity Mary had wasted no time in getting excited for.

There were rules of course. There were to be no visitors in the house while mom and dad were away. The car was only to be used in an emergency situation, or if they badly needed to pick something up at the store. Come to think of it, that might not have been the best way to phrase that rule seeing as it was open to Mary's interpretation. Lastly, they had to promise that they would never, under any circumstances, go anywhere with a stranger.

It might have been the late night horror movie marathons influencing her, but Ib felt that last rule went without saying.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a fairly 'interesting' vacation if they got around to even half of the things on Mary's list.

Ib let her mind start to drift as she went through the monotonous routine of eating. She didn't have all that many plans of her own for their time off. It was a shame too; it wasn't often that they had this much time without responsibility. Ever since she had gotten the job at the bookstore, most of her leisure hours had gone either into work or school. At the very least, it caused Mary to start reading more. It was only an excuse for her to stay close to Ib during her work time, but the brunette was glad that they would at least have something in common.

Very slowly, her thoughts drifted back to the dream. She had trouble making out the details, but the robed man still remained fixed in her memory. He had told her something important. Now if only she could remember what it was…

"HellOOOooo, is anyone home in there?" Mary chimed, snapping her fingers in front of Ib's face.

"Oh- uh- sorry, what was that?" Ib asked as she was forced out of her unconscious drifting.

The other girl rolled her eyes. "I said do you have anywhere that you wanted to go tomorrow, or should I just pick out somewhere for you?"

"Are we going somewhere?" Ib asked. "I thought we would be taking it easy for the first few days at least."

"You see." Mary sighed. "This is exactly why you need me around. Without me you would never end up doing anything outside of your room."

The brunette raised an eyebrow at that. Both of them knew full well that if anyone was totally dependent on the other, it was Mary. For the longest time, she had been terrified of being alone to the point that she would sometimes latch onto Ib's arm for hours at a time.

Ib turned to the girl, about to make a clever retort, when her voice suddenly caught in her throat.

You must be the one to choose…

The robed man's words came back to her in a rush. Mary's smiling face was suddenly replaced by the sight of her burning, her mouth open in a silent scream. The two images flickered back and forth so fast that they made Ib's head spin until reality finally seemed to realize its mistake, and the picture of normalcy slammed back into place.

"Ib?" Mary's voice was tinged with concern at her sudden paleness. "Are you all right?"

She couldn't respond. Her jaw simply opened and closed in shock at the horrific vision that she had witnessed. It had seemed so vivid. Almost as if it was happening for real.

Blue and yellow… The two colors surfaced in her mind as she realized what the implications of her hallucination were.

Ten years earlier, Ib had been an only child. She had been a very quiet kid, raised by two doting parents. Never in her wildest dreams had she thought she would have someone like Mary for a sibling.

That all changed during her visit to the Guertena memorial exhibit. In sheer defiance to the laws of reality, she had been drawn into a living nightmare. The Fabricated World. In that place she had braved sinister creatures that would have made axe murderers run crying to their mothers.

Along the way, she had met Garry and Mary. The two other victims of the gallery had become quick friends with the nearly silent girl. Garry was protective and caring, even though he wasn't all that brave by himself. Mary was an enthusiastic bundle of energy that had taken to Ib like a fish to water.

Then things had fallen apart.

Garry had been separated from the two of them, and had somehow found out Mary's darkest secret. The happy, friendly, blonde girl was in fact not a girl at all. She was a painting. The last, and arguably greatest, work of the painter Weiss Guertena.

In a sickening turn of events, Mary had stolen Ib's rose to prevent the two from leaving her behind. Garry had been forced bartered away his own rose to save her. Little did either of them know that this was exactly what Mary had wanted.

The painted girl was trapped in the Fabricated World. She had been trapped for an agonizingly long time, and the only way for her to escape was by replacing someone on the outside. Garry just so happened to fit the bill perfectly.

Ib had watched helplessly as the violet-haired man slowly slipped away, his life fading with each petal that was torn from his rose. She didn't know how long she had stayed by his side, but it had been a very long time. Endless minutes waiting for him to open his eyes again.

But he never did.

She had hardly known what she was doing when she took the lighter. It didn't matter anymore did it? Garry was gone… Mary had betrayed her… What was the point?

Her body acted on instinct, pursuing the path of the changeling. All the way back to her lair.

A wall of vines blocked her path forward. Ib could feel something behind the plants. It practically exuded loneliness and sorrow. She could have gone through. She could have faced Mary. Maybe she could have even saved Garry.

But she didn't.

Despite everything that the painted girl had done, Ib still felt a bond with her. She knew that if she entered those enclosed doors, only one of them would ever leave. It was too much. She couldn't do it.

Instead she had run away, finding the exit to the real world more by luck than actual active effort. She thought she could escape, but the world of nightmares wasn't finished with her yet. In one last cruel form of irony, it had robbed her of her memories. And who was that waiting for her on the other side? Why it was the same blonde girl who had taken her friend's life.

Mary had escaped by replacing Garry on the outside. Truly fate was laughing when it twisted reality to make her appear as Ib's sister. She was adopted of course, not even the powers of whatever supernatural forces were at work could hide her differences, but nobody seemed to notice her sudden appearance. In all their minds, she had always been Ib's sibling.

For a time the two of them lived happily together. While she was sometimes struck by doubt at her sister's actions, Ib never suspected her true heritage. How could anyone think they shared a house with a living piece of art?

This hadn't lasted forever. Age rips away many illusions, and the buried memories of the gallery refused to stay hidden. Five years after her escape, Ib suffered the most wonderful, horrible, and downright painful experience of her life.

She remembered.

She remembered Garry. She remembered the Fabricated World. And of course, she remembered Mary.

To this day, she still recalled the pain of their fight. She had screamed until her throat bled, shouting hate and demanding answers from her 'sister'. It was by pure chance alone that her parents had been working an overnight shift that day. Even so, she was surprised nobody had called the cops.

Mary had viciously defended her actions as bitter tears coursed down her face, practically spitting out the laws of the Fabricated World that had bound her for so long. She gave every justification that she could think of, but none of her words served to soothe the burning pain that had torn through Ib's heart.

The brunette had slammed the door to her room in Mary's face. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to go back, to have another chance and to burn away the vines that had blocked her way. She had wanted to kill Mary.

Despite her rage, even the hottest of fires burn out eventually. Slowly, unwillingly, she had begun to see things from the painted girl's perspective. Mary had been trapped in a living hell for over a hundred years. The only company she had was the other inhabitants of the gallery, which amounted to almost total isolation. She hadn't chosen the rules. She hadn't done anything to deserve the punishment she had suffered.

And the more Ib thought about it, the less it seemed she had been given a choice.

She and Garry had never given Mary a chance to defend herself. Once her nature was revealed, they had put all their efforts into escaping without her. In a way, the two of them had forced her hand.

The anger she felt slowly drifted away, even as she tried to cling to it. She had opened the door six hours after slamming it to find Mary curled up in a pitiful heap nearby. With tears in her eyes, she had embraced the lost child. Ib could never fully forgive what she had done, but she couldn't blame her for it either.

Still, years later she was continuously wondering; had she made the right choice?

"Ib!? You're scaring me! Say something!"

Ib's head snapped up at the worried tone in Mary's voice. She was currently staring at her with a look of near-panic on her face. Ib was distantly aware of the anxiety in the other girl's eyes. She might not have known what was wrong, but she knew it was bad.

"I-I-I'm fine." Ib stammered out quickly. "I-I think I just zoned out for a minute there."

Mary stared at her, even more shaken then Ib was despite the fact that she hadn't been hit with a wrecking ball of painful memories. She began to speak and get an explanation, but Ib beat her to it.

"How about the amusement park? I mean unless you wanted to save that for later in the week." She knew the blonde loved that place. All those people, the good food (well good tasting at least), and the happy atmosphere were something she couldn't get enough of.

Mary didn't answer at first. She knew Ib was dodging the question, and for a while it looked as though she would demand an answer.

"O-Ok." She said at last. "That would be fine…" She wanted to push the issue, but fear kept her from doing so. Whether Mary feared for her well-being, or was afraid of the possible causes, Ib couldn't tell.

"Right." Ib said, forcing a shaky smile onto her face. "First thing tomorrow, we head for the amusement park. It'll be fun, I promise."

She hoped it would. She could really use some fun right now.


That night, Ib lay awake in her room staring at the ceiling. Well, calling it her room might not be entirely accurate. She and Mary shared one room with two beds. Some of her friends had expressed surprise when she told them that she still shared a room with her adopted sister, but she found it perfectly normal. Mary had never expressed any desire to get a bedroom of her own, and Ib saw no reason to force her out. Now, if she had snored then they would have a problem, but the blonde girl was lucky enough to be a peaceful sleeper.

Ib's mind drifted back to the encounter with the robed man. She really didn't want to think about him right now, but at the same time she couldn't stop.

The choice will have to be made eventually…

She already made the choice, didn't she? Maybe not during her time in the gallery, but she certainly thought she had when she had opened the door to hold Mary. While Ib still felt terrible about leaving Garry behind, she could never leave her.

…Could she…?

NO! Mary was here. Mary was alive. Mary was her sibling, and her best friend. If this freakish dream was trying to make her change her mind, it was ten years too late. That's just all there was to it.

Sighing, Ib turned over to catch a glimpse of Mary's sleeping form. She still remembered the promise that the two of them had made. They promised that they would be together forever, and nothing was going to make her regret those words.

She forced all thoughts of the dream out of her head as her eyes closed. Tomorrow the two of them would go to the amusement park. They would have fun, eat junk food, and maybe even get sick from the nausea-inducing rides. Ib would enjoy her vacation and forget all about weird dreams, and strangers with fashion sense that had been outdated since the dark ages.

Through sheer force of will, she managed to calm the turmoil of her mind and eventually drift off to sleep.