I'll be waiting for you when you're ready to love me again

[wrecked_egg]

♪The naughty little woodpecker
Knocked holes, crumbling the forest♪

Shiro can't remember a time she didn't know this song by heart. It's always been there, right next to her, in that place where she feels all warm and soft when she thinks of Ganta and Aceman and pudding. It makes her think of the times when she was scared and hurt and lonely and Ganta came to play with her. When she hears the song, always going, always playing, she can pretend the cut of the knife on her arm is just Ganta drawing his symbol on her in permanent marker again, that it'll all just wash off--he'll be back soon and she can scrub the scars off just like that old marker, and be all plain and shiny-clean again. She can pretend it doesn't hurt, and that Ganta was just on vacation with his mother and they'd be back for Shiro soon, because they hadn't forgotten at all about her.

♪The angry wood god
Turned his beak into poison♪

Pretty soon it stops hurting altogether. Shiro doesn't mind the experiments anymore. The tests are almost boring, lying there on the bed with the sticky things on her whole body and the doctors with their bright lights and cold metal bending over her. It doesn't bother her. She just goes to sleep, poof, and then when she wakes up she's in her special place again, and Grandpa-ji's there, and he's brought her pudding. And it's okay that Ganta's not there, because that just means there's more pudding for her to eat, and he's missing out, and it's his fault because he left Shiro. She secretly tells herself she's eating it for him, though, because there's no pudding where he is, and then it tastes like it's supposed to, all honey-warm and sweet. And then she remembers that he's been gone so long now, and she's afraid it might be because he forgot about her, and that honey-warm feeling turns to a rock in the pit of her stomach.

♪The poor little woodpecker♪

She knows he isn't coming back. Really, she knows better. It's been almost ten years, after all, and she isn't a child anymore. She was never that naive to begin with, it was just Ganta, and now all the years of pretending have made her someone she didn't really mean to be. She is what Ganta was, once upon a time, because it's easier that way. Easier to cling to that memory of a childhood gone faded and fuzzy around the edges and pretend that it was still like that. Life is just pudding and Aceman and test after test after test and there's no longer any Ganta to look forward to. She imagines him living somewhere else. Maybe with other kids, going to a real school like on TV. Maybe he had new friends, but secretly always wished Shiro were there. Maybe he'd told all his friends about her. Or maybe he'd just forgotten the weird little girl with the scars he'd played with as a child. Maybe he wanted to forget. The first few times she thought it, it hurt, and she kept thinking it because it was the only thing that did hurt. But it just kept making that Ganta-shaped spot bigger and emptier, so she stopped.

♪His nest was poison, and his supper too
He touched his friends, and they all died♪

Ganta would never forget her. He always meant to come back, he just got lost. Shiro dreamed of going outside to rescue him. She asked Grandpa-ji once if she could go outside, leave DW to go bring Ganta back because clearly, Ganta was weak and he needed her help. It was important, life and death. She'd go an come right back. Grandpa-ji just smiled sadly, shook his head, and sang the woodpecker song again. Over and over again.

♪The sad little woodpecker♪

It was ten years ago, now. The song was always there. Ganta wasn't anymore.

Until the song

♪His little poison tears twinkle and--

stopped.

Ganta.

Shiro was gone, gone with the song. Something dark was there to take her place.