Originally written for inlovewithnight during Yuletide 2007
--
Gilbert still remembers the moment when his life changed forever. He's forgotten which picnic it was and who else was there, but none of that was important anyway. All he really remembers is the tiny slip of a girl, with the brightest red hair he had ever seen, dragging shy Diana Barry into the three-legged race. He had laughed at their folly, but grown quiet when they won. Anne Shirley, triumphantly accepting the prize, with the sun behind her lighting her hair into a halo of fire was the closest thing to magic that Gilbert had ever seen.
When she appeared in his classroom the next week, he knew he had to get her attention somehow. He had to meet the fiery girl who had burst into his town, his life. It was the single most important thing Gilbert Blythe had ever known. He searched his brain for ways to get her to notice him, but he was a boy then, and when she didn`t turn around, pulling on her hair had seemed the only option. There was no way to foresee the avenging angel of justice he created that day. Gilbert didn't feel the slate come down over his head, but he heard a crack. To this day he can't be sure it wasn't his heart he heard, breaking just a little to let her in. He fell in love with Anne Shirley right then and there, although it took him a while to figure it out.
For years, it seemed there was nothing Gilbert could do to make it up to her, to show her that he had changed. He studied harder than anyone and made plans for a grand future that he only ever imagined with her in it. Still, she was unrelenting. Once, he overheard her at Queens telling Jane that she would beat him for the Gold Medal if it was the last thing she did. He wanted it for himself, and never stopped fighting for it, but his heart stopped for a moment when he heard the news. He had won the prize, but it would be for nothing if it lost him Anne forever. Gilbert cheered louder than anyone when she won the Avery. They were even again, and everything else would sort itself out.
When Matthew Cuthbert died, he knew what he had to do. Everyone spoke of his giving up the Avonlea School that summer as if it were some weighty decision he had made, but the choice had been fixed the moment he saw Anne's face at the funeral. Life couldn't take Green Gables from her, not yet. He hadn't expected anything in return. The friendship that emerged was more reward than he could have dreamed.
Gilbert waited and planned for years, the dreams of their life together only ever strengthened by their friendship. He thought his life ended that day in the garden at Patty's Place, and can't remember how he got through the rest of the year. The future had stretched before him as a bleak, empty space without Anne to brighten it. His friends laughed and told him that he would get over it, that he would find another girl, but Gilbert knew they were wrong.
If typhoid fever was all it took to finally get her attention, Gilbert couldn't regret a moment of it. The recovery was long and frustrating, but there was such a light at the end of it. Finally, after a lifetime of plans and hopes, Anne Shirley was his at last. He had only ever been hers.