Hi Folks,

So I know its been a while since I've updated this. I'll be honest running around after a 16 month is hard work and tiring then I have my other child and phew! So I've only had focus for AOGG2017 but I managed this week! So sometimes my updates are sporadic but I don't tend to abandon my stories... I come back eventually!

So this one is like some of the others and I know I've said it before that the social pressures of' being a man' were a big deal back then and I really can't emphasise it enough and I think it would plague our boy Gilbert and there needed to be a real explosion so it could heal itself, slowly and surely.

Anyway hope you enjoy, hopefully I'll be updating this more regularly.

love

Carrots x

Anne ran her hand across his back gently but he still jumped out of his skin.

"Its past two in the morning love," she whispered. "Come on, even doctors need their sleep."

He felt flustered at her request "in a few minutes." He said shortly.

She swallowed and looked at him worried. "Okay Sweetheart." She whispered before she slipped back unseen into the bedroom.

It was another hour before she emerged from the bedroom again. "Gil..." she said wearily, please come..."

"I said in a minute!" he yelled, loud enough that a cry came from their bedroom.

Anne looked to him shocked, he rarely in his life lost his temper, but it seemed when he did, it was aimed at her. "I gave you sixty of them Gilbert, its been a hour since I was out here last." She said in a loud whisper which somehow cut right across the cry from the bedroom. Anne saying it seemed to have little impact on him in the moment, where he continued

"This isn't one of our childhood games Nan, don't you get it?!" he asked her. "I have to pass these exams, I have to finish each year or I don't get to be a doctor and all my work would have been for nought!" he told her "Don't you get it? This can't be fixed with little land stars and a bit of magic! This is real life..." He looked at her fallen face but he was resolute "don't you get what we brought into this world? We have two children, two! I mean what were we thinking! They play around during the day so I struggle to concentrate then, so I have to work at night."

That was when Anne looked at him daggers in her eyes, just as her mother came out of her bedroom and entered theirs to comfort Walter, the door closed behind her. "don't you ever talk about our children like that. They are loved and they are wanted, at least by me." Anne said to him.

"You know that isn't what I meant!" he said to her.

"No, I think I do understand that you see our children as an inconvenience." She said quietly enough that the sound of her voice didn't carry through the walls. "You seem to forget Gilbert Blythe, we both brought them into the world."

"I know that!" he exclaimed.

"Do you?" Anne asked him. They seemed to glare at each other for a moment before she spoke quietly. "You seem to be forgetting Gilbert when you thought for a moment you hadn't got into medical school, you have a vocation to fall back on. You seemed willing and happy to do so. You're forgetting we are living on the boarder line of poverty for you to fulfil a dream, oh and this isn't me complaining before you get on your high Blythe horse, because we have been happy here, my mother and I, our children, we are happy to work and to live in a cramped and under par house because we see you fulfilling your dream. You also seem to forget Gilbert that this is a home, not an office, if you want a office, I know the libraries are open and you could complete a lot of your work there before coming home..."

"I want to spend time with my family!" he protested.

"Then spend time with them!" she exclaimed. "Because Joy and Walter are starting to look at you like Mrs Blewett's children looked at her!" Anne told him to which his eyes went wide with shock. "when you are here you are yelling at them to be quiet, it would be better if you completed at least some of your work away from the home and then came home so when you were with the children, you are with the children, and not being the absent father I know you fear you'll become." Anne took a sigh and looked at Gilbert's shocked face. "I'm going to bed Gilbert, come or don't, I'll be sure not to try and ask of you to be healthy so you might enjoy medical school."

Gilbert didn't come to bed that night, though when Anne awoke the next morning and went into the living room she found him with the blanket she had made him wrapped around him, he had jumped at the door opening so was awake but failed to say anything to her. He hadn't even kissed her goodbye (which wasn't exactly a surprise as he had forgotten to kiss her goodbye in quite some time, but Anne suspected this time it had more to do with their early morning argument).

So Anne was surprised when a knock came to the door to see one of Gilbert's classmates standing before her "Excuse me, Mrs Blythe, but Gilbert asked me to give this to you." He said to her handing her a note.

"Thank you James." She said with a confused look as he walked away.

Bertha looked over Anne's shoulder and read the message

Come find the fairies with me. G x

Bertha smiled and said to her "I have the children." She said quietly. "Do you know where to find him?" Bertha asked Anne.

"yes." Anne admitted, trying not to let the note melt her heart in one go. "I shan't go." She said.

"Oh Anne!" Bertha said with a smile to her daughter, "Your stubborn streak."

"I have every right to be stubborn, you heard what he said about our life, our love, our children..."

"I think he wants to apologise."

"So what?" she said "am I meant to let him treat me like dirt and then just let him apologise, we always come back to this ma, always, its always about him needing to finish medical school and damn the consequences of his wife and children, both of which I seem to remember him suggesting, he wanted us to run away he want to..."

Bertha laughed gently. "He wants to prove to you he's all man Anne." She said. "He wants to prove he can take care of you, and his children. You know this isn't Gilbert, you know him inside out! You just want to punish him more."

"So I should." Anne said crossing her arms in front of her stubbornly.

At Anne's surprise another class mate of Gilbert's came up the garden path "George?" Anne asked surprised.

"Gilbert wanted me to give you this." George told her. "He gave me it in class today, he gave another one to James, has he already been?" he asked.

"Yes, but..." Anne trailed opening the note and looked at it, the single word on it made her mother chuckle and Anne cave to his request.

Please?

Under foot was the crunch of the autumn leaves beneath her feet and a soft leavings of dew. Something not of the forest was guiding her steps old stumps of pillar candles lit the ground as she approached the clearing in the grove of trees. She came to a halt as she saw the candles form a circle around the familiar clearing.

"I didn't think I'd convince you with the first note." She heard from above. She looked up to see Gilbert up a tree looking down at her. For once his tie gone his shirt loose as if they were children themselves.

"It didn't." She said softly.

"Last night..." he started.

"I meant it." She told him.

"I know." He returned. They were silent for a moment before he continued. "When I started the course there were four of us, who were married on the course. The other three had children living with them and slowly I've seen them one by one, drop away off the tree, like the leaves I suppose just falling away, gradually to the ground. The pressures were too great, their wife's wanted to settle, they didn't want them in medical school, and I know why, I saw them and I saw myself in them." He admitted. Anne let a sigh out and there climbed the tree to be beside him. She sat beside him and put her hand on his thigh his arm went around her. "There was no shame in them dropping out either, just the other fellows, and society I suppose we put this huge pressure on men being men and not needing to depend on women and not dragging their children up in a squalor, and I know your mom and you keep our house so clean and tidy I'm not complaining about that, its just they saw what I see, their wives their families suffering on their behalf and its a huge burden." She looked at him sadly before he shared quietly "I'm the only one left you know." She looked at him seriously but not unkindly "Matt dropped out last week." She sat silently suddenly feeling his burden with him "and so I respond the only way I know how. I can't drop out I know that, I'd kick myself for the rest of my life but I see you and Bertha, Joy and Walter, I know you deserve so much more then I'm giving you, its not enough and then I..." he trailed not saying it.

Anne finished quietly "...don't feel enough?" she questioned.

He nodded and continued "so I put all this pressure on myself and I know its the children's home but I have to work and I don't want to be the father they fear, I want to be a father they love. But I have to finish medical school I want to be a doctor and a good one."

Anne smiled and kissed him lightly on his salty cheek. "Look at me?" she asked him gently and he looked. "You are more then enough, you are an abundance..." she trailed when he shook his head "of cleverness and brains, knowledge, ambition, determination, hard working and most of all, where this is all coming from where this is stemmed, love." She said to him. She looked into his eyes "I'm not pretending this is easy or its the best circumstances, but know, we know you Gilbert Blythe. I wouldn't have been able to fall in love with you if you weren't so perfectly lovable and you know that's true." She said with a grin. "and you my dearest love was born to be the excellent father you are and the excellent doctor you'll become." She said to him which made him smile. "and I know remember? I know you best of all." She said as he grinned a bit wider and nodded reluctantly with her. "You will finish medical school and I bet top of the class just because you are so naturally brilliant and we can look back on days like this and chuckle fondly at them and say to each other it was such a short time and look at what we have now." Anne looked at him "and as long as you love us Gilbert," she said quietly "we have all we need."

"I do love you." He said quietly holding her to him. "and I'm sorry, I let my insecurities come out way too often." He looked at her and said "Oh and the quip on Mrs Blewett's..." he said with a grin to her.

Anne bit her bottom lip and cringed "I know, I'm sorry." She said as he chuckled.

"Ouch!" he mocked as she laughed "No love, it was the wake up call I needed." He said honestly. "Its been like this for a long time." He admitted "even before we had Joy, its mattered what other people think and its not like me Anne it isn't..."

"its exactly you Gilbert, you cared when the other little boys mocked you for having a girl as a best friend, you cared, not that you listened for a long time but you cared and the thing is you care deeply, its how we're connected so strongly because we're deep thinkers and deep feelers and we are so very very deeply in love." She smiled.

"You forgive me?" he asked her.

She smiled and looked at him "No matter what remember?" she asked him rubbing her nose with his. He chuckled and smiled lopsided grin.

"I'm going to make it up to Joy and Walter too." He said with a smile. "I want to take Joy out for some afternoon tea on Saturday, just me and Joy, spend some time just with her and on Sunday I want to take them both to the park and we can play." He said with his jaw set with determination.

Anne smiled "I think that is the sweetest idea in the whole world."

"I want our babies Nan." He said with some much feeling in his voice "Just as I want you."

She smiled as his lips nipped at her neck and they looked out to the opening in the trees. "Where did you get the candles?" she asked him.

"Jonas Blake, I went to his church on the way home, he was going to throw these all out because they were almost out of wick and he just got a new order in." He said honestly. "I told him my woe and he felt sorry for me and gave them to me."

"They look just like fireflies." Anne said with a smile.

"Can't find any in these woods." Gilbert admitted.

"Its the city." Anne admitted. "Its not like home." She smiled and whispered "On the land give me stars..." she sighed happily "I missed you Gil." She told him.

"I love you Nan." He said quietly, "please don't ever doubt it."