one-time love affair, a thousand days and nights

Summary: There never was anyone else in her life than him. OneShot – Anne Shirley, Gilbert Blythe.

Warning: -

Set: Story-unrelated.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

In Anne's life there only ever was one man.

Not Matthew. Matthew was her best friend, the person closest she had to a father, the only person she would ever have wished for as her father. Anne loves Matthew – loves him with everything she has. He has been kind to her, has listened to her, he has loved her back. And for that, she will never forget him, will never stop loving him.

But she never saw Matthew as a man.

Roy, neither.

Roy was a perfect image, a dream prince. The one Anne wanted to love so desperately she actually believed she loved. The one she had dreamed of from her childhood on, the one who carried her bag and looked at her stoically and full of melancholy. The one who talked about books and dreams and fantasies. But as so many other things in her life, Roy, too, was an image of perfection, one that never would be able to step out of the boundaries of her own imagination.

Because life was something else.

Because life is a blond, lithe man with a smiling face and twinkling brown eyes. Someone who helps her clean the streets of Avonlea, someone who studies Latin and Greek and Geometry with her and who thinks her beautiful even in her old, grey and tattered dresses. Someone who talks about daily chores and work and gossip. Someone who shares his life with her, not merely her fantasies, and this someone isn't Roy.

One way or another, Gilbert has always been a part of Anne.

From the day he pulled her hair and called her carrot. From the day she resolved to hate him forever he has had a place in her heart, in her mind, and even if it started out as hate there never was someone else in the world who inhabited Anne's mind as constantly as Gilbert Blythe. As long as she hated him and refused to talk to him, she never needed another enemy. As long as he competed with her and fought her over the place of the best student, she never needed another rival. Anne never needed another friend, later, when they had resolved their differences and started talking, and she never needed another lover. Gilbert never replaced Diana as her girl friend, of course. And he would never be able to replace Marilla or Davy or Dora. But what of her heart doesn't belong to her family belongs to Gilbert.

Complete surrender.

Maybe it was the way his name seemed to fall from her lips so often, first in an angry, then in a resigned, later in a most loving way.

Maybe it was the way he seemed to be there in her dream house, always present, always a constant, and how his words could immediately calm her.

Maybe it was his eyes. Or his hands. Or his face. Or…

Love comes quietly, Anne has learned, waits for you to look into the other direction and then sneaks up on you. Settles in your heart and mind and being until you overflow with it, until smiling and feeling and touching seems the only way to contain it. The world takes on color. It does not smother away weaknesses, edges and lies. Anne still is proud and rash and short-sighted. Gilbert still is proud, as well, and too kind and too patient. But Anne has more than enough imagination for both of them, and kindness, and love, and Gilbert has loyalty and determination and calmness for the both of them. Together they radiate, fill the room with warmth that is difficult to stand sometimes. Their smiles are something private, their laugh tells tales of happiness and understanding, and one feels like an intruder. Even without knowing them one can see that they are happy.

In love.

Had anyone asked Anne a few years ago what she felt for Gilbert, she would have resorted to old stories about friendship. And it hadn't even been a lie. But friendship has only ever been an aspect of their relationship, has grown into something more. More beautiful, closer, deeper. More desperate, too, because it is hard to be without Gilbert and gets harder with each passing year. And pass the years do, slowly, silently, accumulating like the love they share, passing and shifting and altering and yet remaining, in essence, the same. Golden sunshine and tears of grief, pearls of laughter and days of happiness. If there ever was something like a life lived well, it is hers.

Theirs.

Forever is a shifting concept when days pass and friends come and go, when loved ones leave and new ones are born. Eyes full of laughter, a house full of memories and a heart so full it feels like bursting, like everything they have is too much to bear, everything they love is so perfectly wonderful and so heartbreakingly familiar. And sad. Sad, because there are faces that don't return except for in their minds, people that leave and do not return. Anne's heart reaches out as it always did and Gilbert's answers, as is his habit, and together they share laughter and happiness and sadness. And years, and years, and years. Rainbows over the valley and the sea during nightfall. Wet sand underneath their feet. Heavy, golden and red curls that are streaked with white, and a hand that has held her heart so long and yet still holds it like it is the most precious thing in the world. Looking at Gilbert, Anne thinks, is like looking back and seeing the future. Like looking forward and seeing the past. She clings to him with everything she has because the forever she once thought she would have feels like it is as fleeting as the most fragile of all fragile hopes. Since her heart realized it – that she was bound to him, that there was no her without him – she has seldom not shared her hopes, fears and wishes with him. But this one thing she keeps, hides away deep inside her. I love you. How simple, those words, and yet the meaning they carry is more than she will ever be able to put into words.

I love you.

His hand catches hers as she is about to leave the room.

"Stay, love."

She does so.