Chapter Text
It starts as a small cough, but it’s winter, so no one thinks anything of it. Most of the children is down with a cold in bouts throughout the winter. Anne herself has been sick for a few days the past two winters she’s stayed and lived at Green Gables.
No one thinks anything of it because out in the country, out in Avonlea, no one can stay entirely warm through the winter. To not get a little sick is something reserved for the richest in the town. Though even Diana has been a little sick a week back, and Anne suspects that’s where she’s gotten her illness from.
But a cold is just a cold, it isn’t the first cold Anne has ever had, it won’t be the last, and she has worked and taken care of children while suffering from much worse ailments. There simply is no excuse why she shouldn’t go to school.
She doesn’t want to fall behind, if Gilbert is to win the top spot, he’ll have to do it fair and square. She won’t let a little sneeze here and there take her out of the competition.
“Goodness, child,” Marilla sighs as she always does whenever Anne does something that isn’t as Marilla’s used to. “How I wish you would just stay home for a couple of days. You’re far ahead of the other children.”
Anne stares gobsmacked at her caretaker (her mother, is what she secretly calls her even though she knows it’s not quite true, but it feels like it), “I am not, Marilla. You would want me to lose to Gilbert because of this? There is no way you could make me stay at home. This is about more than just grades, it’s about honor.”
Marilla doesn’t answer, and when Anne looks to Matthew for support, he averts his gaze to his porridge as he always does whenever he doesn’t want to get caught in the crossfire of a discussion between her and Marilla.
“If you say so, Anne.”
“Whatever do you mean?”, demands Anne outraged, and a little desperately, “I can’t just not come to school for a couple of days. Gilbert would get too far ahead, now that miss Stacy has agreed to give him extra lessons. And I would have you know that I would not be able to live just a day without seeing my dearest friend, Diana. Oh, my heart aches at the very thought!”
The only answer she got is a sigh from Marilla, and when she looks to Matthew once more, he is very concentrated by whatever happened outside the living room window. The deafening silence, one that hasn’t been there for a long time, is something she took as a victory, however it makes her back cripple.
It isn’t because she enjoys contradicting Marilla, but she really will be fine the few hours school lasts. Never has sickness kept her from performing her duties, and now that she’s in a place she belongs she isn’t going to slack off. It isn’t because she thought they’ll actually throw her out, Matthew and Marilla, just because she was sick.
But really, she’ll rather not risk the chance of finding out. Better that they see her as invincible, useful, that not even sickness keeps her from being the most perfect daughter they can think of.
She quickly finishes up her breakfast, the silence, though sign of her victory, too hard for her to endure for long. Besides, she can feel a cough fit on its way, and she’ll rather be upstairs in her room so she can hide the sounds in her pillow. If they hear how wet her coughs sounds, they’ll never let her go. In all the homes she’s been in where the children were able to go school, if they sounded like she does now, they were asked to go back to bed and stay there – Anne would bring them some warm milk any second now, wouldn’t she, darling?
A shiver goes through her whole body, and she quickly shakes it off. Now is not the time to get lost in a past long over. She is home here at Green Gables, she is here to stay, she is loved and cared for. She has no other children to care for, no duties other than the occasional cleaning, and all she has to do is go to school. So that’s what she’s gonna do.
She’s gonna go to school, do her duty to show her thanks for everything Marilla and Matthew has given her. They’ve given her a whole new life, they’ve lit a candle in the darkness and let it burn until it became the sun, and she hasn’t lived in darkness for so long now. Nothing is going to let her jeopardize it.
Especially not anything as silly as a cold.
“Goodbye Marilla, goodbye Matthew,” she calls before putting on her coat and hat, “I can’t wait to come back.”
She doesn’t hear whatever reply they give her, so soon is she out of the door.
The air is freezing cold, and the wind makes her shiver even through the thick winter coat Marilla has given her. But if she can just ignore the cold for a bit, the world is as beautiful as the first day in spring.
Avonlea looks like a wintery kingdom, home to the most beautiful snow fairies and ice nymphs, and she can’t help but laugh and smile. She still can’t believe the ethereal beauty that Avonlea possessed is part of her home.
“Oh, how beautiful you are, covered in the most fine and innocent snow,” she whispers, “I thank thee, spirits of the water and earth, to let me see such a sight as this. It’s absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.”
But however beautiful the world is, the cold couldn’t be ignored for long, and each breath she takes let the icecold wind enter her lungs. The cold makes her throat hurt even more than it had when she awoke this morning. The cough fit this time is so violent that she has to stop in her tracks, just to be able to gain control over her breathing once more.
“I’m just a little sick, your highness,” she whispers to the nymphs, “nothing to worry about. I do so appreciate this beauty you’ve created. It’s just the weakness of my mortal body that doesn’t.”
She resolves to as quickly as possible get to school, surely the soreness of her throat and the lightheaded feeling will pass once she’s warm once more.
The hike to the school has never felt quite as long nor this hard before. She doesn’t even know what time it is, whether she was late or early. Surely, she will be early, she had left much earlier than usual, but then again time seems to stand still here in the white winterland. Days, she feels, could have passed without her knowing.
When she finally sees the school rise up in the horizon, it’s hard to distinguish the white building from the white world around it. The only thing that makes it stand out is the ringing of bells signaling that class is going to start now.
No walk has ever seemed to take so long, which surely should have worried her. Normally, when she saw the school, the trip was almost over. Now it seems to go on for infinity.
When she turns around the corner in the field and finally is close enough to the school, close enough to touch, she can’t see anyone outside.
Shoot, if she comes too late there’d be trouble. She doesn’t want trouble. It isn’t her fault she’s late anyway, it’s the bug spreading in her body. Her mind seems to float outside her body, and her legs seems to ache at the very thought of even moving.
But move she has to, she has to go to school. She can’t let Gilbert win. She has to talk to Diana.
She coughs until she reaches the door.
The warmth inside the school surrounds her, and it feels like she can finally breath properly, she almost feels like laughing, or singing, dancing. Something to signify that she feels alive again, not on the brink of death, close enough that she could feel death breathe into her neck.
“Anne?”, a questioning voice says, and she quickly opens her eyes to see all the eyes of her classmates directed at her. She looks to Diana, who looks at her with furrowed brows, to miss Stacy who she’s never seen look more concerned.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, miss,” she says, curtsies which gives her the bout of laughter she was looking for to diffuse the tension in the room. “I lost track of time.”
There is a moment of silence, as she walks through the classroom to her seat. She pointedly doesn’t look at Gilbert who is studying to become a doctor and surely will say something clever like that she is too sick to be here, and she should be heading home right this second.
Maybe he’d even suggest that he escorted her, just in case, which maybe, just maybe, won’t be so- no, it would be so terrible. Ruby would cry. It almost makes her cry, the thought. Strange.
“That’s quite alright, Anne,” miss Stacy says with a soft voice, quite unlike her, but Anne just smiles gratefully. “Your cheeks look a little red, are you quite alright?”
She nodds harshly, which makes her head throb for some reason. She quickly disguises her discomfort with a smile, a little forced maybe, but a smile nonetheless. “Of course, miss. It’s just very cold outside, is all.”
Miss Stacy nods, and that is that, she hopes. She peers over at Diana who still has that confusing furrow between her eyebrows.
“Are you sure you’re alright, Anne?”, she whispers, and Anne nods once more.
“Just fine, sweet you,” she smiles, hoping the subject will be dropped as quickly as her sickness had occurred this morning.
//\\
The first part of the day goes excruciatingly slow because Gilbert is the only one who answers any questions, his streak only interrupted by Diana and Charlie a few times, which is one of the most infuriating and concerning things to happen.
Every time Gilbert sneaks a glance over at Anne, she sits silently, still as a rock statuette, with those blank eyes, white face, and red cheeks. The only sound he really hears from her is soft, wet coughs, which only makes him surer in his case. She’s sporting a cold and a fever, and if she doesn’t take it seriously, takes a day off, it might develop into pneumonia.
He answers one more question, a question he knew that Anne would’ve been able to figure out quicker than he did, and that really is what concerns him the most. That she doesn’t even seem aware of any of the questions, because she doesn’t even lift her gaze whenever Miss Stacy directs a question, however subtly, directly at her. Asks how do you spell this, looking right at Anne, but Anne doesn’t even look up, doesn’t even shake her head. Just stares at the table, until miss Stacy finally looks away to see who knows the answer. Most of the time, it’s only Gilbert – not because the others are stupid, but because miss Stacy is asking the sort of questions that Anne and Gilbert usually would fight each other intensely on.
It only makes him more and more certain that when they take a break, he has to make Anne go home. Or, glancing out of the window at the falling snow, he’s not even quite sure she would make it to Green Gables alone. Not in this weather, not with that condition. However capable she usually is at taking care of herself, illnesses renders everyone helpless.
He remembers vividly his own father’s deterioration from hardworking farmer into the miserable condition he was in, in those last few weeks where he could hardly move from the bed to the table to eat. The last few days he had even trouble with eating normally. Not that he thinks the illness, Anne has contracted, is nearly as bad but the visions, the memories of that time still haunts him and makes him want to cuddle Anne in a thousand blankets to keep her away from any evils in this world that may take her away from him as they did his father.
Not because he loves Anne, of course – but because she’s such a dear friend to him, and because she might, one day, be more. If only she’d let him care for her, if only she’d believe that it was okay not to be strong all the time, and that sometimes humans just need each other for the sake of not being alone. And that’s fine. That’s normal.
In time. In time, he’d make her see it. In the end, he thinks, he wouldn’t even care if she ends up with him (though he hopes, oh, how much he hopes). If he just succeeds in making her see that she is just as worthy of kindness and help as all those she strives to please, then he’d be happy.
The minutes until miss Stacy calls for a break goes by all too slowly, but Gilbert has always been a patient boy.
But when she finally does say, “and then I think it’s time for your lunches, don’t you?”, and the class says ‘yes, thank you, miss’, and she dismisses them, then he flies out of his seat.
“Is she okay?”, he asks Dianne as he sinks down onto his knee by Anne’s side, very reminiscent of the day they first met when she didn’t speak to him for whatever reason and he’d resolved to call her ‘carrots’ to get her attention (and hadn’t that worked a treat for him).
Diana meets his eyes and shakes her head immediately. “She didn’t say one word to me through class. She didn’t even look at me.”
He nods gravely, turns around to go to miss Stacy, only to find she’s right behind him. He looks over at Anne once more, jaw slightly clenched.
“She has to go home, miss,” he says, leaving no room for argument because none will work. “I’ve been studying in Charlottetown with dr. Brown. I know a little of how to treat a fever. Can I lead her back to Green Gables?”
Miss Stacy smiles gently at him and nods. “Of course, Gilbert. Do help nurse our Anne back to health.”
He doesn’t really stop to examine her statement, the only thing that really filters through his brain is that miss Stacy gave him permission to help Anne home so he can help her fever break.
He smiles quickly at both Diana and miss Stacy, completely ignores the chatter in the background of both the other boys – who he knows are watching him with furrowed brows, Billy because he’s a dick who still thinks he’s better than Anne, and Charlie and Moody because they think they’ve got him all figured out – and the girls – who he doesn’t even have the energy to listen to for a long period of time on a normal day, nevertheless right now.
“Take care of her,” Diana smiles at him, before she gives Anne a kiss on the inflamed cheek and a quick hug. It makes his smile a little more soft and genuine. He’s always liked Diana, and the way she has treated Anne just makes her more dear to him.
He doesn’t quite want to think of how Anne would’ve had it if Diana hadn’t been such a sweet and kind girl who saw not an orphan, but another girl full of magic, compassion and imagination. Someone who could teach her about another side of life, than just etiquette and marrying a proper man when you grow up.
They’re good for each other, Diana and Anne. He likes to think that Anne is also good for him. She’s made him more gentle, more patient. He’s never been a cruel kid but he could get irritated. Anne’s good spirit usually diffuses the frustration in him.
“Come on, Anne,” he whispers, and puts his arm around her waist and brings one of her arms around his shoulder, gripping her hand tightly in his.
It’s like he’s developed tunnel vision as he walks out of the class room. He doesn’t see or hear the other students after he says goodbye to miss Stacy and Diana.
The world outside the school is just as white and cold as before, that’s not a problem – a little cold isn’t that bad when you have a fever. What worries him is the heavy snowfall. Nothing’s far away from each other in Avonlea, but there’s still quite a walk out to Green Gables, and in this snow he’s afraid of Anne’s core temperature getting too low.
It’s a fine balance, treating a fever. The patient mustn’t get too hot nor too cold. That’s why it’s the very last solution to force the patient into an icebath in order to break the fever. Lowering the core temperature so drastically can in extreme cases worsen the patient’s condition.
“Anne?”, he whispers, and she slowly lifts her head to look at him. But as he locks eyes with her, it’s easy to see how strongly the fever has her in its grips. Her eyes are blank and red rimmed, and though she looks directly at him, her gaze is faraway.
“Anne, if you can hear me,” he says lowly, as they walk in the snow, “you have a fever. I’m taking you home right now, because your fever was much too bad for you to be in school.”
There’s nothing for a little while but the near indistinguishable sound of the snow falling. If it wasn’t for Anne’s body burning like a furnace pressed against his side, it’d be almost peaceful, maybe even a little romant- no, there’s nothing romantic about Gilbert following Anne home because she was too sick to stay in school.
But another day, sometime in the future, next winter perhaps, he’ll try to coax her out on a walk in the snow. Because, though he’s used to the winters in Avonlea, today the landscape looks like it’s taken right out of one of her tales of ice queens and snow fairies.
And then there’s a little sound suddenly.
“Gilbert”, is what she says, and it sounds surprised and confused, and it makes him smile and lifts a little weight of the ball of worry that’s been settling in his chest, almost like a stone upon his lungs, preventing him from breathe properly.
“Hey Anne,” he smiles and looks down at her. She doesn’t look that much better, but at least she seems aware of who he is. “Do you remember anything?”
“We were at class, weren’t we?” and his heart clenches a little at the unsureness in her voice, and he just barely restricts himself from putting his hand on her forehead to check just how high her fever is.
He’ll use the thermometer when they got her home in bed.
“Yeah, yeah, we were,” he says, slowly so her fever-addled brain can catch up with his words, “but you were sick, so I’m bringing you home.”
She smiles a little at that. “’s nice of you, Gil.”
He looks at her, astounded, for at moment before his smile widens. “Don’t think any of it, Anne. You can pay back by letting me win the next spelling bee.”
There’s silence for a moment, and he concentrates on getting them through the masses of snow falling around them.
“You’d win if you just added the e.” The lighthearted banter made him laugh out of pure relief that the fever hadn’t knocked her out completely.
“Never forget the e.” She smiled at that, and then silence followed once more but it didn’t feel nearly as suffocating as it had before Anne had said anything.
The snow around them fell quicker and quicker, and heavier and heavier. But that was just the Avonlean winter for you, that’s how it was. Whenever the snow fell, it didn’t just stop, and like all things in life, it’d get worse before it’d get better.
That was his father’s life motto. Everything would eventually turn around, all you could do was just weather the storm until it did.
But worryingly, this storm had made Anne go completely quiet again. Not even teasing about the spelling bee and the top spot in the Prince Edward Island district got her to talk, not even to laugh with him about the possibility that Moody would get the first place.
He was positively worried about Anne’s health. And they were still nowhere near Green Gables.
“Shit,” he muttered, half-wishing that Anne would comment something about how he should watch his language. She didn’t. She just watched him.
If he hoped to ever break the fever, he had to get her inside right now. It couldn’t wait until they got to Green Gables. So instead of continuing down the road he was heading, he turned down the road leading to his own house. It was at a shorter distance, and he was quite sure that either Bash or Mary would be home to assist him in getting Anne in bed.
“If you can hear me, Anne,” he whispered against her temple, “I’m taking you home to my place. Mary and Bash will be able to help me treat you, and you’ll be right as rain again in no time. Don’t you worry.”
She doesn’t exactly answer, not that he’d expected her to, though he’d hoped, but she does lean a little closer to him. Which could either mean that she’s heard him and feels safe, or that she’s slipping into unconsciousness which would mean that he’d have to hurry to get her into the warmth of the house.
Maybe it was fate, maybe he’d seen them coming from a mile away, but fact was that just when Gilbert’s muscles were on the verge of giving out, Bash had come running towards them with a worried glint in his eyes.
“Who you got there, Blythe?”, he asked, though Gilbert knew that Bash could tell himself it was Anne. Nobody else in all of Avonlea, nor Charlottetown for that matter, had as beautiful, cobber hair as Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.
“Anne, Bash,” he panted, as Bash took Anne’s little body, she was too thin – always had been, into his arms. “She’s sick with fever.”
Bash looked down at her face, skin drawn and pale apart from her cheeks that were red as fire. Not to mention that even through his coat, he could feel the heat radiating off the poor girl.
“Don’t worry, Blythe,” he reassured the boy who still looked at Anne like she might be about to draw her last breath and then disappear in the wind, like snowflakes disappeared from the sun. “Mary will have your girl up and running in no time. And then you can go back to mooning over her from a far.”
Gilbert splutters indignantly at his side, but it makes that crease of worry in Gilbert’s forehead disappear for at least a few moments, so Bash counts the little friendly jab worth it.
“Shut up,” is the late retort that Gilbert gives him when he’s regained his composure and tries, and Bash knows this because he’s seen Gilbert do this so many times, to act not like a young boy, worried for his best friend and the girl he’s in love (however much he denies it), but like the doctor he wants to be, clinical and unaffected. Able to treat his patients, sow their wounds, without his hand shaking or him fainting.
Bash isn’t doubtful for even a second that Gilbert will one day achieve his dreams, professionally as well as personally. Though he hopes the boy will never lose the kindness and gentle heart.
“Mook”, Bash says, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Gilbert glare at him before his attention is caught by Anne making a slight whimper in Bash’s arms. Her eyes are closed, though, when Bash looks down, which makes him worry once more.
The rest of the way to the house is spent in silence and their steps are hasty and long.
“My God, she’s burning up,” is what Mary exclaims before she makes Bash lay Anne down in the sofa.
Gilbert stands awkwardly in the doorway into the living room, watching Mary worry over Anne, demanding that Bash get this and that.
“What can I do?”, he asks, his insides trembling with the need to do something, anything to help Anne, to make it all better.
“Not much, Gilbert,” Mary sighs, “she could possibly have scarlet or winter fever, but we can only pray that her fever will break sometime in the night, now that she’s lying down and letting her body rest.”
Gilbert nods, still feeling as helpless as ever. It’s just like with his father all over again. All he could do was exactly what he was told by Dr. Ward then and Mary now, which was to let the sickness run its course.
“Can I stay with her through the night?”, he asks softly, knowing it isn’t allowed, but also not wanting to leave Anne to her fever and the dreams the illness might bring forth.
He once had scarlet fever, and when he woke after three days, his dad told him that he had been mumbling all the way through about the strangest matters. For a girl with as many traumas as she, he’d never want to leave her to go through it all alone once more.
If it came to her having nightmares about past hurts, this time Gilbert’ll be there to comfort her all the way through.
Mary smiles kindly at him and nods, “of course. Bash will run to the Cuthberts when the snow eases up a little, to tell them of the situation. If you just bring your mattress in, I’ll make some space for you to lie close to the fire, yeah?”
He smiles gratefully at her, muttering a thanks as he quickly speeds to his room.
All throughout dinner, he’s been sneaking glances at Anne who has been sleeping since the moment they’d put her in the sofa. However, now that she’s lying down and Mary has washed her sweaty forehead with cold water, she looks far more peaceful.
When they finish up, neither Mary or Bash will hear any of his protests against that they clean up everything after dinner. Mary simply gives him a stern look to close the topic, while Bash smirks at him and nods towards Anne’s makeshift bed in the living room.
“Go to your Anne,” he says, and Gilbert completely ignores the way it makes his heart warm and flutter a little, and how much he likes the sound of that – his Anne. Ignored it completely.
He ignores it only because he actually really does want to go to Anne. Otherwise he’d take his time to set Bash, and his heart, straight on the fact that Anne and him are only friends.
The following hours are spent finishing up his homework before doing Anne’s as well. If she saw him doing it, at this late hour especially, he’s positive she might wack him with her chalkboard once more. But, looking at her flushed face, only lit up by the small candle by his side – and the fire from the fireplace, he decides that’s a risk worth running.
Finally, though, he puts out the candle, puls up her blanket so her shoulders are covered, and goes to sleep himself.
“Goodnight, Anne.“, he whispers. He gets no answer per see but in the limited light, it does look like the shadow of a smile passes over her face.
At first, he has no idea where he was, what time or date it is, but as soon as he gets the sleep out of his eyes and casts a look around the room, it all comes back to him.
In the sofa by his side, Anne is twisting from side to side, her brows furrowed in distress, and he quickly sits up so he’s at level with Anne.
“No, no, no,” she whimpers, and he quickly takes her face in his hands.
“It’s just a dream, just a dream,” he whispers quietly to her, against her temple, so that her subconsciousness might hear it, despite the heat of the fever.
She opens her eyes then, but just one look, even in the limited light of the embers, makes it quite clear that she’s far, far away, out of his reach.
“You don’t understand,” she whispers, “the twins are sick, so sick. He’ll kill me.”
He shakes his head out of pure reflex, in order to not let his anger tighten his hold on her cheeks. “No, Anne, you are quite safe. The twins are healthy, just like you will be.”
She helplessly lifts her hand, reaching into the darkness of the night with no real destination. He takes it in his out of pure reflex.
“Are you sure?”, she whispers.
He nods, smiles slightly, thinking that even though she can’t register it properly, a smile will calm her warring mind.
“Quite sure, Anne-girl,” he whispers, “you can go to sleep.”
It isn’t because he had it planned but her outburst has made it impossible for him to go back to sleep for a while, all he wants to do is be there if she wakes up again, but exhaustion is a powerful thing, and he eventually falls asleep again despite his adamant determination not to.
So when he again is jolted awake, this time by Anne ripping her hand out the grip he has on it, he wakes with a start.
“Anne?”, he asks, not quite sure whether she’s truly awake or not.
She blinks a few times in the dark, and he leans in a little closer.
“Anne, it’s me, Gilbert,” which he means as a comfort, but instead of her calming down, a shrill laughter resounds in the room.
“Don’t mock me, Gilbert is gone,” she whispers, anger lacing her voice, and he sighs once more, knowing that the fever hasn’t miraculously broken in the cover of night.
He shakes his head, “no, Anne. I was gone, but I’m back now.”
She doesn’t seem to hear him, just whispers on. Even though he tries to get her to listen to him, she continues to ignore him. As she’s speaking, it becomes more and more apparent that the timeline in her head is quite screwed up.
“No, no, Gilbert’s gone. He’s out there, experiencing the entire world, sailing the seven seas. Quite like pirates, but better because pirates pillaged and raped, and Gilbert is such a kindhearted spirit. He’d never do something as despicable as that.”
He smiles a little, turning slightly to get to the cloth in the bucket Mary has left, if Anne got too hot during the night. Like now.
“That so?”, he asks as he softly wipes her forehead and brow.
She nods weakly against the cloth. “But I was so cruel to him. He lost his father, you know. And I just wanted him to smile again, so I said that he was lucky, because he’d known love, and maybe I should’ve thought a little before speaking, because I think I messed it all up.”
He feels his breath catch in his lungs, so he has to crouch down in order for his air pipes work properly once more, which drowns out Anne’s voice for a few seconds.
“- but I stand by it. Gilbert has known so much love throughout his life, and despite him not having his dad anymore, he still has a family. The entire Avonlea adores him, loves him. He’ll never be alone, even if he lives alone.”
A soft smile curls Gilbert’s lips upwards. “Yeah, I know, Anne-girl.”
“I do hope he’ll forgive me one day,” she whispers, and then she looks straight at him, and he gives her a little smile, hoping it’ll get through to her. “Do you suppose he knows that I’ll always be there for him? He may not have his parents, but I’d know that a family doesn’t need parents.”
He wipes his cheek clean of the traitorous tear that has slipped from his eye. “He knows, he’s known since you smacked him with that chalkboard,” his voice is a little watery, but that’s okay, that’s alright. He’s never needed to keep any guards up around Anne, anyway.
“’s good,” she says, and finally her eyelids slides together, and not too long after, her breathing evens out.
“Goodnight,” he whispers once more, giving her hand a small kiss on the back of it. “Please, get better.”
It can be that it is because Christmas is just around the corner, and everyone knows how much Anne loves Christmas, and her body might share her excitement so that’s why it ran through the virus like it was running a mile. Whatever the reason, when the morning light shines through the small living room of the Blythe household, her fever has broken and the only symptoms of her sickness that lingers is her headache, dizziness and a little cough.
Nothing that can’t be solved by a day’s rest and buckets of tea, something that Marilla Cuthbert decides she’d get right there in Gilbert’s living room because it is still too cold and reckless to have Anne traveling in such a ghastly weather as it is outside.
“Take care of my Anne, Gilbert Blythe,” exhorts Marilla Cuthbert, face very stern, and Gilbert dares not even slouch his back in fear of her deciding against letting Anne get her sleep, here in Gilbert’s house.
“Of course, miss Cuthbert,” he nods seriously, jaw clenched, “I’d never do anything else.”
Her face softens as she nods. “That I already knew. Do have mister Lacroix if her condition worsens.”
God forbid. He nods gravely. “Of course, miss Cuthbert.”
She lingers for a moment longer, then goes to hug Anne goodbye. “Get better quickly, Anne, so we can get you back to Green Gables.”
A smile forms on his face at the exchange. No, you don’t need parents to make a family, only people who loves you.
And maybe, just maybe, is he on the verge of being ready to admit to Bash, that maybe he does love Anne. Here in the quietness of his own mind, he can admit to it without hesitation or fear of not having that love requited.
One day he’ll get the courage to tell Anne too. And then, if she loves him back, he’ll shout it from the rooftops so that the whole world may know that he loves Anne Shirley-Cuthbert with all of his heart.
But that could be years from now, and today, today is all about making Anne feel better, and make her smile again.