"You kept it…" Gilbert stared in wonder at his ex-girlfriend and childhood friend.
"Don't you start reading too much into it. You gave me something, I liked it. End of story." Felicia grumbled, fighting off her own smile at seeing the wonder and pleasant surprise on his face.
"But you married my brother, and you kept what I'd given you despite all of that?" Gilbert watched her face, trying to read the now indiscernible part of her eyes that he used to know so well.
"It was a family gift." She grumbled despite knowing that it had been gifted to her when she was still dating Gilbert and long before she and Ludwig had even considered dating.
"It was a gift to my beautiful girlfriend." Gilbert muttered, watching the way Felicia now shifted, agitatedly.
"You became my brother-in-law." Felicia insisted with the hint of a blush to her face.
"I loved you." Sometimes 'I love you's can be shifted around in meaning over time, and Gilbert had refused all of these years to let her know that he still cared despite their nasty break up and her marriage to Ludwig.
"Not really, back then." Felicia sighed as she stared back and tried to recall every second since she and Gilbert had to get along after that; she easily remembered the shy look in Ludwig's eyes when he asked her out and the pleasant joy that she'd said, 'yes' despite having previously dated his brother.
She remembered the family dinner with Ludwig's family when they announced their relationship and the fact that Gilbert had to have known who his brother was dating based off of the look in his eyes and how noble Ludwig always had been.
Felicia remembered the years of denying that Gilbert still could send her heart racing at the worst of times and recalled that while a part of her heart had been sold to Gilbert, she'd loved Ludwig with the remaining, jagged pieces.
She remembered Ludwig's funeral almost four years ago and the way that her heart broke and felt absolutely destroyed.
The North Italian felt as if she could never love again, not with any level of intensity.
She remembered all of those years before that, hiding Gilbert's last gift to her as a couple, and instead spent her time while that was tucked into her shirt, showing off her wedding ring and making her love for Ludwig clearer than the murky waters of her love for Gilbert.
Felicia felt the dying organ started to come alive inside her chest, starting to seek out for Gilbert as if that was its last feeble chance at truly living again.
She knew better.
The Italian had long since known that it was much too soon to move on as she saw Ludwig in her mind, all of their lifetime together, and it consumed her in an almost tempting way; she would never see Gilbert as himself if she tried now.
She must wait much longer before she could even try to let him fully back into her heart in the way from years ago except for the fact that they'd grown up; she'd known of love's passion and immortality now.
"I did." Gilbert muttered, "I've grown to love you more still." His hands nearly shook at the nerves that suddenly washed over him; he tried for years to find a woman that he could love more than Felicia, who he steadily fell more in love with with the passing of time.
He'd never been able to.
"You only truly know how deep your love runs after time has passed, almost stripping it from you." Felicia shifted, nervously hating how she'd always had to balance the act of being in love with two different men, brothers, in a different range of ways.
Love always felt different per person despite its overwhelming capacity.
"Then I've only grown to love you more." Gilbert's voice was determined, passionate.
"I can't, not yet. You have to wait a little longer yet before I can truly feel all of the love I have for you and not only see Ludwig if I ever could get close to you." She held herself together, just barely, as if some of her heart fragments had wanted to fall out and leave her.
"I'll wait. You have my word." Perhaps Gilbert's brother, Ludwig, would be smiling down at them when they fell together, finally able to see his older brother happy, and his wife return to happiness yet again.