Wither, Whither [AU] [Private, Join-Requests Allowed]

It had been a long time since this had last happened, Anya noted idly. Fragments of her soul were scattered all throughout her domain, but it was not common for one to return to her so... reluctantly? Yes, that was the word for it. It was if this fragment of her soul, which she could sense coming, had been unwilling to let go of the body it had inhabited. This was somewhat worrying; perhaps the person had been scared of death? That seemed most likely, but she would know soon enough.

These fragments... it was always a bittersweet experience for her when they arrived. On one hand, she was able to experience a 'normal' life through their eyes, through their memories. It gave her a lifetime of memories, that were not truly hers; she was living vicariously through others, and while the memories were comforting, it was impossible to simply forget that they were not truly her memories, and that she could not have such a simple life... still, it was a nice comfort, nonetheless. So when this new soul fragment arrived, she prepared to sit for awhile, absorbing the memories, and savoring them; to feel a little less lonely, if even for awhile.

It was a process that usually took a few hours, maybe even a day if the carrier of the soul fragment had been exceptionally long lived. She was shocked, therefore, when the process was completed in a few short minutes. That shock gave way to a sharp pain in her heart as what she was experiencing registered, tears pooling in her eyes as the memories of a young girl called Ib came into focus. Of course, it wasn't just Ib's personal experiences that were upsetting. No... no, this called for action. It was one thing for Ib's life to be cut short so young; it was tragic, but unfortunately not uncommon. The suffering that those three had endured before the end, however... this would not stand.

Creating a simple avatar of herself was a simple matter, as was sending it to do what was needed. At the moment, however, she needed to go and collect Ib's soul; she would be just reaching the afterlife now, and was sure to be frightened.

~~~~~

A strange white door would appear in the middle of the room, right in front of Mary. It seemed to just materialize there, a soft glow emanating from it. It opened only a moment later, as a beautiful woman in white stepped out, the door closing behind her. The avatar of Anya paused, looking at the sight before her with a pained expression. 'Yet more tragedies occur, with me being none the wiser. If I'd known before, I could have prevented this...' Softly, she spoke, using the memories from Ib.

"Mary, be calm... be calm, Ib would not want to see you crying like this..." She would need to be delicate here, most likely. She'd gathered that Mary was not entirely stable, and she didn't want the girl to end up getting herself hurt.

"You're wrong!" Mary cried out, so caught up in her grief that she didn't entirely register the woman's sudden appearance. "You're wrong! I was wrong! Everything's wrong..." Her volume dropped from a scream of stabbing grief to the whimper or a broken girl as she went on, "She wouldn't care. I cried and cried. She didn't care..." She trailed back off into incoherent sobbing. Not once in the entire exchange did she look up from the empty body now cradled in her hands.

The avatar closed her eyes briefly, sighing softly. She knelt down, and lightly placed her hand on Mary's shoulder, putting a bit of her calming influence into play. "Mary, of course she cared; she just couldn't do anything. She was sick, Mary. As much as she wanted to answer you, to tell you everything was okay, she was trapped in a way." This was true; even if Ib had been unable to respond, she had heard Mary. Perhaps not everything, but enough. "It really is going to be okay now though, Mary. After today... you won't be trapped here any longer, and you, Ib, and Garry... all three of you can be together, okay?" Of course, it would take some doing... but it was important. She'd need to first restore Ib's body, reconnect the soul.. separate Mary from her prison... healing Garry's mind without compromising his personality and memories would take time. But at least she could help Mary and Ib relatively quickly.. once she got Mary to calm down a bit.

Hearing the gentleness in this woman's voice for the first time, Mary realized she wasn't alone. Looking up, for a moment she was startled by how pretty this stranger was and would have perhaps thought her a painting like Mary herself, but Mary knew all works from the gallery by heart. This stranger was... strange. When had they come? Why had they come? How? For a moment, Mary was distracted from her grief by this confusion, and that was enough for Anya's words to truly get through to her as she tried to puzzle the strange woman out.

Hope. A fragile, beautiful, delicate thing like a seed that had just begun to germinate. It breathed some life into her, and caressed her like a blanket made of air. So fragile, so perilous. She dare not grasp it lest it slip away.

"Y-you... You promise? A real promise? But... but... Ib's... and Garry's..."

The feeling vanished abruptly. The light shell around her heart collapsed into darkness as despair bloomed once more.

"You're not going to burn me, are you? I... I..." Her voice was frightened, for a moment, then she looked back down. Her next words were... empty, almost. "...I'll be with them if you do, right?"

It was like being stabbed in the heart, seeing such despair and hopelessness in a young girl. "No... no, Mary, I'm not going to burn you. I'm going to do something much, much different than that. There are a few things I need to do; the first of which, is I need to separate you from your painting. Can you take me to it, Mary? I'll place a protection around Garry and Ib, so that they will be safe until we come back, alright?" Her hand moved from Mary's shoulder, to gently take her hand as she tried to look the girl in the eye.

"I promise you, Mary; I will not hurt you, Ib, or Garry. I want to free you from this gallery, so that you can see the world outside and live your life on your own terms. And if everything goes well, Ib and Garry will be able to be with you every step of the way. I know it's difficult, but I'm asking you to trust me. I want to help you to be happy."

Perhaps it was madness, but... Mary didn't like being alone. Didn't like being empty. So... when Anya reassured her. When she was given the hope of a light once more... She didn't know how Anya intended to do what she wanted to do. She didn't know if Anya could do what she said she would. Or if she could trust Anya at all. But...

The worst she could do couldn't be any worse than what she was experiencing now.

"It's not far..." She spoke, fingers tentatively wrapping around Anya's offered hand. "It's in my room. In my sketchbook... It's safer there..."

Anya smiled reassuringly. "Alright honey, just lead the way." Even if the memories were second hand, she still felt the affection for Mary that Ib had, the same concern. It didn't help that she had a tendency to become maternal toward everyone she met; after all, everyone within Meus Carus was somewhat like her child. At least that was how she saw it.

Nodding, more to reaffirm her decision than anything else, Mary took an experimental step forward. Then another. And then she was walking normally, leading Anya out of the doll room, into and out of the brown area, and to the doorway that lead to her sketchbook.

Unlike the beige walls surrounding it, it was smudged and bright pink, as if it were a giant crayon drawing. Taking a breath to steel herself, Mary grabbed the wax-knob and opened it. Beyond was a colorful, pink-crayon staircase leading down into a black void.




"It's... up those stairs." She said, abruptly realizing how fast her heart had been beating as she struggled to catch her breath. The stairs indicated were behind a wall of thorny vines. When Mary made to pass them... they didn't budge. "What?"

Anya was deeply disturbed by the world around her; this distorted world born from the mind of a lonely young girl. It only made her more determined to help Mary. She held Mary's hand tightly as they went, wanting to give her what comfort she could. And then everything seemed to be falling apart, the world seeming to be verbally attacking Mary. The way she covered her ears suggested that she was hearing it in her head, not just seeing it.

"Enough!" A wave of energy rippled off of Anya, pulsing through the sketchbook world. The intent was to force whatever was harrassing Mary to pull back, though she wasn't sure exactly how things worked here. Still, she moved and gently lifted the young girl into her arms, cradling her into her chest as she strode toward the thorns. She may not know how this sketchbook world functioned, and arrogance was not something Anya could ever be accused of, but she knew there was no way these thorns could stop her. She pulsed her energy again, the intent to force the thorns apart, to carry Mary up the stairs to the painting. "Let's go, Mary. I'm not going to let this place hurt you ever again..." Silently, she made a mental note to make sure that this place would never hurt anyone ever again. Whatever was necessary.

When Anya made her proclamation and her power waved through the world, everything shifted. For a brief moment, up was left and right was down - green was blue and yellow was candy cane and orange was square. Everything flinched chaotically at once. Then it was stable once more, and silent. As Anya carried her shivering charge toward the thorns, they seemed to shrink away from her and move aside to let her pass upward into Mary's room itself.

It was a violet room. The ground was littered in childish drawings - a swirly sun, a fat tulip, even stick-figure people that a discerning eye would easily recognize as Ib and Garry. And drawings of blue dolls everywhere. Though there was only one in the room itself.

It had stubby, fingerless limbs and a round head with large red eyes. It was smiling a toothy, mildly disturbing smile at her from its position amongst Mary's books. Titles such as 'How to Make Friends' and 'How to Draw' stood out easily even from so far away, written in preposterously large letters.

And at the end of the room was Mary's portrait. It had an octagonal frame, and depicted the girl herself exactly as she appeared, standing with a small smile on her face, hands politely folded in front of her navel. It was a superb painting, for it could pass for a photograph were it not on canvas and smelling of paint. And it had been painted entirely from the artist's imagination...

Anya looked about the room, sighing softly. She could see signs that Mary had been at least mildly happy at times here, but the loneliness was apparent; it was easy to see it in Mary when she suffered from the same thing. Carefully, Anya approached the painting, shifting Mary a bit so that she was cradling the girl in one arm, as she reached out to trace the painted version of Mary's face. "It's beautiful..." After a moment, she placed her palm flat against the center of the painting, while turning her head to look at Mary. "This won't hurt, but it will likely be a little scary for a moment. While I'm working on separating you from the painting, you will briefly go somewhere else. Someone I'm sure you want to see will be waiting for you, though, so you'll have company in the meantime. Are you ready, Mary? I need you to be brave for me. Just a little longer sweety, and I swear to you that you will never be alone again." That was a promise she would keep, no matter what.

Still shivering, Mary hesitated a brief moment before nodding, still too shaken to speak.

Anya smiled at Mary, before channeling energy into the painting. In the same instant, a white light covered Mary's body, and she disappeared from Anya's arms. With Mary safely away, Anya focused on severing Mary's connection to the painting, and to the gallery itself.

~~~~~

Mary would find herself standing in what appeared to be a wide open meadow, with nothing but a single tree standing not far away. From one of the branches, however, hung a simple swing. Mary would notice that Anya was standing there, pushing the swing, while someone else sat in it.

That someone else, was Ib.

Mary blinked in confusion - and some disorientation - having gone from being held in the woman's arms (and, now that she thought about it... was that what a mother's touch felt like?) - to standing in a viridian meadow. Then she saw the tree. And... the strange woman, again? And then she saw the swing the woman was pushing, and...

"IB!" She shouted, ecstatic. Forgetting her bewilderment, the blonde girl darted to Ib's position almost as fast as it took her to call the ruby-eyed girl's name in the first place. Said girl's head darted upward, eyes raising from their lowered contemplation just in time to catch a face-full of Mary. "You're okay! You're okay! And you're here! And I'm here! And we're..." Mary trailed off then, staring in wonder as she comprehended the fact that she was standing in a field of grass - real grass! - beneath an open sky - a real sky! and it was blue! - next to a real tree! "And we're OUTSIDE! It's amazing! It's better than any of father's art, and father's art is wonderful!" The ruby-eyed girl said nothing, but she smiled - her first smile since coming here - as she returned Mary's hug without thought, arms tightening about the blonde girl's form as if to reassure herself she was there.

Anya simply smiled as she watched the two. Seeing this was definitely high on the list of reasons she still loved her self-imposed job. She gave the two girls a moment to themselves, before speaking up. "You two are currently in a part of Heaven; a sort of waiting room, I suppose you could call it. Ordinarily, from here you would pass on to the afterlife. However, that won't be the case here. Both of you will be going back to Earth, to Japan, to live your lives to the fullest. There are things I need to explain first, however."

Afterlife? Heaven?  The only thing Mary understood of Anya's words was that she and Ib would both be going to Earth. To Japan. To the real world. This she accepted as A Good Thing and thus she returned to admiring the simple scenery about them as if it were mother nature's own Mona Lisa.

Ib, though, was more prudent. She understood she had died. Then logically, of course this would be the afterlife - or some place related. That was unsurprising. But... "We're... going back? But I... Can you... do that?" Perhaps she might have said more on the subject, but while Ib was an intelligent girl... she was also nine, and not a particularly eloquent speaker at the best of times.

Anya came over, and sat down carefully in front of the two girls. "Yes, Ib, I can. As we speak here, a part of me is separating Mary from her painting and the gallery, so that she can leave it freely. Once that is done, I am going to return you to your body, but first I will need to heal it. You will be very tired and weak when you wake up back on Earth, Ib. You will need plenty of rest. Your parents will believe that you are simply sick; I don't think it would be right to worry them with what happened in the gallery, but if you wish to tell them, I will explain it to them." Here, she sighed.

"Garry... is very sick. It will take time to make him well again, as I must be delicate about it. I'm afraid it could be a little while before you two see him again, but I promise that you will. Now, Mary, as for where you will go from here... there is an orphanage, which is thankfully not far from where Ib lives... do you know what an orphanage is, Mary?" She recalled, in Ib's memories from the soul fragment, Mary asking Garry if cherry tree's tasted sweet; it was likely that she knew next to nothing about the outside world, so she'd need to be thorough here.

Ib remained silent, mulling Anya's words over as Mary answered the question, "It's... like a house?" She guessed.

Anya smiled. "Somewhat. An orphanage is a place that takes care of children who can't live with their parents for one reason or another. The place I have in mind, there will be a lot of kids for you to play with, and the adults there are very kind. You'll be able to make plenty of friends there, and you'll be well taken care of. Not to mention, Ib will be able to visit you every day if wanted. Or you could visit her, whichever works better for you two. Do you both understand?"

Ib nodded simply, and Mary joined in more enthusiastically, "It sounds nice," She said.

Anya seemed pleased with that. "Alright. Now, the work with the painting is almost done..." She waved her hand, and a white doorway appeared. "Mary, just go through that door, and the... other me, will be there waiting for you. She will take you back to Garry and Ib, and she will bring Ib back to you."

Mary gave Ib an uncertain glance, which was returned with a softly reassuring smile, before looking back to Anya, "You promise?"

Anya chuckled a bit, and held out her pinky. "Pinky promise, Mary."

Solemnly, Mary locked her own pinky - tiny in comparison - around the offered appendage, "If you're lying, I'll feed you a hundred needles!" She promised ominously, prompting Ib to giggle at the seriousness of Mary's tone... failing to recognize its sincerity.