AN: Shirbert future fic because I'm trash for AWAE and S3 seems like forever and a day away.

Many thanks to my AWAE ladies Ruhi and Selina—you guys, if I fly it's only because you have set me free. Like the song says, you are the wind beneath my wings.

Song (and title!) inspiration: Surrender by Natalie Taylor

The first time Gilbert touches her, it is not a happy memory.

He caresses her wrist, lightly, feather touch even, but all it does is takes Anne back. Back to the Hammonds, where no one held her except to punish her, where Mrs. Hammond would grip her wrist so tight the skin around it would turn deathly white and she'd leave bruises the shape of her bony fingers (and even then it wouldn't be the worst bruise she'd receive because it would only be the prelude), where Mrs. Hammond would shove her outside and across the dirt, where her knees would be stained red and muddy as Mr. Hammond struck her with his choice of the birch switch or his belt, both of which she so despised, his mark hitting true despite being a drunkard, again and again, till her skin was a mottled red to match her hideous hair, till she hurt so badly that she couldn't bear to sit at all the next day and maybe even after then. She thought she was passed this so how strange it was to her, that this would all come flooding back after many a years living with the tender love of the Cuthberts, after knowing the warmth of Gilbert's reverent gaze. So she freezes, all the heat that he incites within her siphoned from that simple touch and she thinks, rather hysterically, that this is it—she has scared him into leaving her for she has revealed herself, her true self, the quiet, fearful child she's always tried to hide behind the pretty words, the brazen opinions, the foul temper and the wild calls for adventure. She is but a seagull with a crooked wing, doomed to be grounded. For what is a bird without flight? What could such a crippled thing deserve?

Certainly not Gilbert, she thinks desperately, with his doe-eyed sincerity and his pure heart. No, she certainly did not deserve Gilbert, and Gilbert certainly deserves more than a broken thing like her, with her cracked mind and her fragile, glass heart. She thinks of running and instead she runs her mouth for that's the fastest thing about her, Lord help her, she can't even break properly. And so she tells Gilbert all that she's never spoken of, not to the Cuthberts, not to Diana or Cole, not to herself, alone in her room during her evening prayers and not even to the darkest of nights or the most blinding of mornings when both feels as if the entire world was holding its breath in perfect stillness and everything that could ever happen in that moment was a secret between you and the heavens. She speaks and she speaks and she speaks till her words feel like spilled ink across a white carpet except she isn't pouring words, she's pouring her heart and it is bleeding bleeding bleeding over Gilbert's worn shoes and staining the wooden floorboards of his home and isn't that we she does? Because she is broken and she is a blotch and she is a shame and—

"Anne!"

A voice other than her own, his voice, startles her into silence. Softer, he tells her, "Breathe." And that's when she notices the shortness of her breath, the blackening at the edges of her vision. And so she tries to breathe but it suddenly feels as if she's forgotten how and the panic wells within her chest, a minuscule pin of an annoyance that grows into an anvil and she's lightheaded and—and—

"Breathe." Gilbert. He reminds her. "With me."

She focuses on his chest, on the way it rises and falls, on the way it expands as it fills with the sweet air of Spring and contracts as he exhales, the heat of it a fervent whisper against her already hot cheeks. She manages to catch her breath, only to have all her demons dancing across her mind, daring to steal it once again and just as she feels the depths of despair yawning before her and ready to drag her into its clawing grips, Gilbert brings her back, her name almost like a benediction on his lips. When their gazes meet, she feels awful struck for she has seen many looks on Gilbert's face, smug, bereaved, triumphant, defeated, joyous and resplendent, always resplendent, but never this, as if she were standing in front of a mirror.

"Anne..." he murmurs.

As if he was broken too.

"You're wrong," he declares with a shake of his head and they may be older but some things are far beyond the valleys of hope to ever change and the need to prove each other right almost overrides her fears. She is about to protest when he barrels on, ardently.

"You are not broken. You are a sculpture, you are clay. You're a mosaic of all these lives you've touched, lives that are made beautiful because of you." He smiles, the curl of his lip and the slightness of his eyes seeming to convey, Including mine.

(Which is silly, cause he has always been beautiful, even if she hasn't always wanted to admit it)

"And you are made beautiful because of all the wondrous things you give to the world." He stops smiling all of a sudden. It brings a new gravity to his next words, as weighted as the look in his eyes. "There has never been more whole a person as you."

And then.

Stillness.

Silence.

Her mind, for once, has gone quiet.

"I once asked you if you ever needed any dragons slayed and, this may be no dragon but—whatever you need of me, however impossible, just ask and I will do it because I'm always going to be here, for you. By your side is where I always wish to be," and do her eyes deceive her or is that a blush blossoming in his cheeks? And she would dearly love to tease him, if she were sure her own face was not as heated from the passion with which he speaks, the air around them heavy with his pronouncement. "I mean, that is of course, if you'll have me. I'm yours," he murmurs, his palms supinely bared to her, kneeling as if she might actually be a queen and he, her loyal knight. "Use me as you please."

Use me, his mouth conveys.

Touch me, his eyes declare.

So she does.

Lightly, first, much as he did—a ghost of a touch. She pads a finger down the bridge of his nose only to make her way to the shapely arch of his brows. And then there are his cheeks edging to the cut of his jaw, rough from the hint of stubble and sharp enough to cut a diamond with. Which brings her to his lips, the softness of it contrasting oddly to his jawline. She traces the shape of it with her thumb, the cushion of that cupid's bow, the lambent curve of his smile. It's what makes her sink to his level as well though he remains that much taller. So much so that she must tip her head a tad back to meet his eyes, that scorching ashen scrutiny screaming at her, touchmetouchmetouchme—

Till, finally, unable to contain himself he utters, albeit beneath his breath, "Touch me."

"I'll do you one better," she grins because of course in the spirit of competition, she simply must, she places both her hands firmly on his chest—which had been gradually moving towards an erratic dance to match his breaths. And then she tilts her head.

And slants her lips atop his.

So, yes, perhaps when Gilbert Blythe first touches Anne Shirley-Cuthbert, it isn't the brightest of moments.

But when breathing each other in fades into the need to breathe at all, when Anne finds her hands buried into the thick strands of Gilbert's hair, when Gilbert discovers (and delights) in the futility of space between their bodies, their foreheads touching and his arms an anchored vine around her waist, when their hearts feel utterly entwined it's as if they might fly out of their chests only to wrap themselves in one another as their bodies seemed to have done, well then.

That's when the moment Anne Shirley-Cuthbert touches Gilbert Blythe, really touches him, becomes a memory with enough light to power all of Canada, bright enough to rival all the stars in the universe.

Bright enough to set her shadow demons ablaze.