Thank you to all who've been reading thus far! Your comments have brightened my life. Just a couple of things:

1) All characters and backstory belong to LMM, of course.

2) I wanted to clarify the way I'm structuring this story; I'm following Gil's thoughts in a mild stream-of-consciousness. I picture him processing and thinking a lot, sometimes in jumbled fashion, following Anne's death, mulling over different memories as he thinks over the present (retired and widowed), distant past (the canon storyline), and recent past (Anne's illness).

3) I deviated from canon a bit and Gil is presently living in Avonlea. It felt right to have their last days spent there.

4) Please forgive me for any errors. It's been a couple years since I was in school and my eye for editing is rusty.

Hope you enjoy chapter 2!


"Even in my short life, my studies have shown that the female specimen is rivaled with non other," Charlie Sloane loftily drawled, forking a large piece of pie into his mouth. "As I could be perhaps, no-indeed, the largest of admirers of such specimen, I say with the best and utmost respectful intentions that womanly presences are a cause for distraction upon campuses." He gave one nod while chewing loudly, impressed by his own thoughts, and shifted right onto a delicately embroidered pillow the girls had been previously praying would make it through the night.

Gilbert winced, looking at Anne and finding her face pinched, as if she were struggling internally to choose which cringeworthy action to comment on. Since Redmond was one of the first crowd of schools to allow coeducation, it was a hot topic that cropped up constantly in discussion. Choosing to keep the conversation focused, Anne countered, "But must women suffer not receiving the most prestigious education simply because men find them a distraction? Perhaps with time men will grow to see a womanly presence as an equal to his own."

"Not with me around, honey!" Quipped Phil, glass of wine in hand. "And I am deliciously delighted to continue being a distraction," she trilled with a wink at Gilbert.

Gilbert laughed, and whether it was at Phil's mock arrogance or that Anne looked bewilderedly from Phil to himself after that wink, he wasn't sure.

Charlie was roused from gulping deeply of a glass of milk, "So you would see, Phil, it would be an outright crime if man were to ever forget your beauty whilst in the classroom."

"Oh Goggles, what a charmer you are." She said with wiggling eyebrows and a sip of wine. Charlie looked satisfied, and Gilbert could practically read his thoughts: The Sloane-ator strikes again.

"The Sloaneishness was so thick in that room, Gilbert!" Anne said afterwards with a disgusted shiver. "If not for Phil's comments I was sure my temper would rise up and froth over. I had thought my instances of fiery tongue had be quenched long ago, but there is nothing like Sloaneishness to bring it roaring back! I suppose my red hair has to remind me sometimes it still is very much alive and well."

Gilbert stretched out his arms against the cool grass with a smile. "Yes, I was planning to hand a slate to you in case the Sloaneishness became too overwhelming."

Anne slapped a hand over him playfully from her place on the ground. "You do know me too well." After a pause she slowly asked, "But really, you don't think Redmond would go back to accepting only men after this backlash, do you?"

Gilbert thought momentarily. It was hard to say, really, for the controversies of coeducational colleges had been widespread across the national news. Among the reasons Charlie had quoted, resources were spread thinner as more women embraced the opportunity of education. Progress was not without cost, and the world was questioning whether women were worth it. He realized with shame that her distress was less about Sloaneishnes, and more that her dreams could be taken from her and squandered on men.

Looking at the stars, he embraced the moment with a steady breath to express the gift her presence had been to him since that fateful day in Mr. Phillips classroom. "Anne, this is what I do know: that slate you smashed over my head knocked more than just a bruise into my thin skulled thirteen-year-old self. It was as if a passion for life had been cracked open and spilled over. Even your stubbornness to forgive me stirred up this fire to want to keep up with you. You were so different, so determined to beat me, and I know you thought I was trying to beat you too, but I was really just so happy there was someone else who felt like learning mattered, someone who found themselves dreaming beyond what anyone else in Avonlea had accomplished. Your passion made me realize there was something missing in my life. And here we are now, studying together at college, and I'm certain I wouldn't be here without you inspiring me to not just dream, but grasp that I had the capacity to dream. Even now, there's no one who challenges me in the classroom or encourages me to keep studying hard. Definitely not Sloane. And I know it's not just my life-everyone who even takes a glimpse at Anne Shirley can't help but go away feeling as if some shift in the world has taken place."

He looked at her, her eyes closed, chin raised, limbs sprawled against the grass, as if the stars beaming down were penetrating her with life. He had been so caught up in his declaration he had forgotten to fully answer her question and hastily added, "So I know, that without you, without coeducation, there would be so much missing. I really do think good will win out and progress will continue. It's really hard to see how good couldn't out weigh the bad."

He willed for her to look at him, for her to reach out, for her to do something-anything! Anne opened her eyes with a smirk, staring above thoughtfully. "I guess the slate incident wasn't such a mistake after all," she teased.

Gilbert blew out a relieved laugh, thinking, you have no idea. Instead, he matched her joking tone, "Hey now, don't get too far ahead of yourself."

They lay among the expanse of Heaven, joking with one another, dreaming as equals.


Years later

The evening stretched its cover of darkness, scattering the winking stars across the Avonlea sky. Gilbert secured one arm around a weakened Anne, the other gently supporting her crooked elbow as they took a slow ramble through their garden. Just a few steps tired her, but it wasn't hard for Gilbert to coax her to stretch her legs each evening while she was able.

She paused, craning her eyes to the heavens. His eyes followed her gaze, looking upon the stars so familiar to them, their old constant friends, keepers of the secret dreams they had uttered below them in the many years together.

Anne spoke, wondering aloud, "What do dreams become, when the future opens into an empty hallway of unknown?"

They both knew her illness had an inevitable end, and it ravaged Gilbert's thoughts. He had decided to squash and suppress them until she was ready to drag them into the open air, like now. "Are you afraid of it? Death?" Gilbert asked cautiously.

She set her eyes forward, continuing to walk. "When I was an orphan, before Green Gables, I dreamed of being whisked away to Heaven on a chariot, flying far, far away into the clouds, to arrive at a hovering world that was ethereal, foreign, distant, and unlike anything on earth. I think my experience on earth was too unbearable to think Heaven could replicate anything the same. But then I arrived at Green Gables, and it was if I had entered Eden itself. The air was sweet, and everything glowed with grand magnificence, and it was hard to imagine anything that could be yet greater still. With time, I toyed with the thought that perhaps all that is good and lovely and beautiful is that way because God grants the earth to share pieces of Heaven. It's as if the skies were a patchy, worn blanket, and Heaven's light shows through the especially worn parts."

She stopped again, gazing heavenward, "And on the other side of death I will step past the worn threads into all it's glory, to taste forever the goodness I have experienced here. There will be no more Novembers, no end to all that is right, no more weary afternoons and evenings laying in bed, but goodness will extend and the taste of it will never tire. If I were to die now, I think I'd find myself still continuing this walk, in our garden, the moon looming like a comfortable friend for tea. I would skip and leap to grab an apple, and it would be perfectly crisp, juicy, sweetly tart, and the next bite would taste better than before. Our dear Walter would be there, and we would talk of Wordsworth and Keats, and Joyce too-perfectly sweet and healthy. The only thing that would be missing is you, and I can't imagine it complete without-"

"Please, please Anne, please let's not imagine when we have to separate just yet," Gilbert interrupted and whispered desperately, grasping her to him with his other arm around her, foreheads touching. Death seemed to leer at him, inching ever so closely. He wasn't ready to let go, it couldn't be so soon! "We're here together now." He drew her close and kissed her tenderly, silencing her.

He continued to capture her lips with soft, desperate, lingering kisses, pausing every few moments for her tired lungs to catch up. His strong arms enveloped her frail sickened body, holding her up, while she clutched at his waist for strength. The image of an empty, unknown hallway continued to creep into Gilbert's mind, and he frantically escaped with each prolonged kiss, believing through it he could reach inside her, grabbing hold of the life that kept slipping from her grasp with each passing day.

"We're here now." He whispered, as she took a shaky breath and nodded, "We're together," shutting his eyes and meeting her lips for another time, his forearms pressed to her spine as he caressed her coarse graying hair.

Anne reluctantly expressed her legs were tiring, dreading to return to the coffin her bed had become. They sauntered in silence back to the house, folded together and walking as one.

That night he dreamed he were trapped in an empty unknown hallway. He looked up, but there were no stars to guide him. Just black expansive abyss.


Anne lay flat against the bed, wearied eyes shut, sheets haphazardly thrown about in the sickly summer heat. The candle light flickered against her ashy gray face as she called raspily for Gilbert.

Hearing her voice, Gilbert hastily emptied the bed pan and rushed to her side. "Gil," she repeated hoarsely, "It's so hot. Tell me please, of anything. I want to hear your voice. Tell me what's on that mind of yours."

He sat next to her, leaning over to place a damp cloth on her forehead. What could he say? He smoothed her mussed hair. Surely he couldn't express the gnawing torment as death's leering face inched closer and closer still.

He exhaled with an anguished sigh, "Sweetheart, you know the only thing occupying my thoughts. All I see is that empty hallway...I can't see a life beyond this, one that we haven't dreamed together."

"Shhh...Shhh." She moved her hand to her forehead, covering his. He knew he was failing her. They sat there together, Gilbert's chin to his chest, trying to find a way to make her laugh but discovering nothing.

After a time, he blew out the candle and crawled gingerly into bed with her.

He felt a hot whisper at his ear, "You are a pillar of your own Gil, the one that's so ingrained into the structure you forget its importance. You have been an image of steadfastness, of perseverance, faithfulness, stability. Don't you remember, all those times? You have stood tall and steady all these years, a steady oak to my swaying willow. Without you, I know all would have crumbled down."

Tears of exhaustion smarted his eyes. "I've been standing for you, Anne."

"You've been standing because it's who are you, Gilbert Blythe. You have for me, but you have for our children too, and for your patients. And you'll keep standing." And with one last hot breath she fell asleep.

Gilbert lay looking to the ceiling at the constellation they had placed there jokingly years ago, pretending they were children again. He felt a resolve strengthen deep within him again: They had made yet another dream together under the stars, and he would live to see it realized.

For her.

I just couldn't help putting Charlie and Phil in there, I just love them. LMM is so great at creating characters.