Hi All!
Well this has been my story of the week! I've had a few new followers and reviewers thank you all so much! I don't always get the chance to write back but I do appreciate the feed back.
I have really loved doing this one and updating it is always hard because I am a huge fan of Green Gables Fables and what I didn't want was a block sort of transfer of their story into mine. So I've had to keep it quite different, obviously there are similarities, plot etc, but as well I'm trying to bring in characters which are normally missed out in condensing versions (such as GGF and even the masterpiece of Sullivan's and I do love that one no one and nothing can replace it) but by missing those characters it actually shapes the story very differently and by keeping them in and making them up to date its shaping the story rather in a fun and different direction to the Anne that we love on screen.
A lot of you commented on bringing in Miss Lewis (Or Miss Lavender as she was known in the books, I actually had to go away and double check her last name so I could write it into the story) and Mr Irving (Both Stephen and Paul!) Its not just them as you'll see here!
It is nice for Anne and Gilbert to be friends in these AOA chapters, because it says in the books they became good friends and it doesn't really show it they just went from being sorry for their past behavior to being "best friends" and we see a lot of sentimental moments but not the friendship, and I suppose again its within the constrains of what she was probably expected to write and Gilbert never (even when they were married) could be counted as a 'main character' in the books, yet everyone who reads the books comes to the same conclusion, that he should be. I know the story is on Anne, but you'd think her husband would feature more in her life then Montgomery was allowed to write!
Anyway enough rambling hope you all enjoy!
love Carrots x
Anne came in from school her schoolbag thrown on the floor next to her she flopped onto the sofa.
"Marilla Cuthbert you can't be serious!?" Demanded Mrs Lynde speaking to Marilla as they walked through the house.
"I don't need your opinion Rachel." She said sternly as they walked into the living room where Anne in interest looked up. "Oh Anne your school bag!" Marilla said to her.
"Sorry." Anne muttered as she picked up the bag.
"I seem to remember you thinking keeping Anne was a bad idea and look how well that turned out." Marilla said back to Rachel.
Anne said proudly for a moment having no idea what they were talking about for a moment but basking in the glory of being a poster child.
"That was a fluke!" Rachel demanded before Anne sat deflated. "This time you know what you're getting into and you're doing it voluntarily!"
"Doing what?" Anne asked.
"Plus, Anne was already grown, you've had to do very little with her, a few tweaks here nor there these children's characters are yet to be determined!" Mrs Lynde continued.
"A distant cousin has died and left two children, I'm considering taking them on." Marilla said.
"The state can take care of them Marilla." Rachel objected.
"No!" Anne objected suddenly.
"Oh and now she'll have her two cent. You turned out just fine."
"You think that's down to the state?!" Anne objected. "You don't know what it was like!"
"It did you no harm." Rachel said offhandedly.
"It did me no harm you can see!" Anne said. "Oh Marilla you can't, you can't let them get lost in the system, they are vulnerable…"
"They'll be protected!" Rachel continued.
"Rachel stop!" Marilla warned her friend looking at Anne's face. "Anne look at me." She whispered to her as Anne looked at her tears in her eyes. "I won't let that happen to them." She said to Anne.
"Gracious child!" Rachel said "you're shaking!"
Marilla held Anne's hand "I was going up to meet them on Saturday, see if our personalities agreed with each other. I know it is Saturday you normally spend that time with Diana and Gilbert…"
"I'll whatsapp them and cancel our plans" Anne said "they'll be fine. Can I come too?" she asked Marilla.
Marilla smiled then said dryly "I never thought you'd ask."
"Happy Birthday!" Anne exclaimed coming up behind him smiling as he turned around. His grin widened as he saw it was her and he went to shut his locker. "No, don't shut that." She said taking her bag off her back and starting to zip it down "here." She said handing him a rather heavy wrapped present.
"You didn't have to do this!" he exclaimed surprised. "Anne! Thank you!" he said , his voice genuinely grateful.
"You haven't opened it yet!" Anne exclaimed, he grinned at her and opened the package up.
"Anne!" he exclaimed holding the new books in hand "Lord of the rings?! All of them!?" he asked her. He looked at the books more carefully "Hardback!" he exclaimed.
"I saw your paperback version the other week when we went up to your room to study, and well, it wasn't in one piece, I figured you liked it so I thought you'd appreciate the hardback."
"Thank you!" he exclaimed with a smile to her putting an arm around her they side hugged briefly.
Which is when Josie walked by with Charlie not far behind "Urgh books?!" she exclaimed. "why don't you just get it on a kindle or whatever?" she asked them.
"You can't compare a book to the kindle." Anne defended.
"Well there's a time and place for them Anne." Gilbert said with a knowing smile. "Holidays? No room in backpack for ten books, that's okay…"
"Oh no! You don't get to feel the weight of the book in the hand, like the weight of the plot, and the pages, the smell of the book and the sound the paper make when you turn the page, you can't tell me you can get that from a tablet!" Anne exclaimed.
"I'm just saying there's advantages, no more sore shoulders from carrying all those books." He smiled knowing it would make her rise.
"Okay fine, obvious you don't appreciate these…" she said playfully taking the books from him.
"Noooo!" He objected hugging the books to his chest. "Not my Lord of the rings books!" he exclaimed. "Precious!" his best Gollum impression in place. Anne laughed as he put the books in his locker and shut the door before he put his arm around the back of her neck and held her in a playful headlock for a moment before she laughed he messed her hair then smiled down at her fondly "Thanks." he whispered to her letting her go they smiled together as they walked down the corridor together.
Marilla and Anne came off the train in Charlottetown. "The twins are living here with a family, fostered until they could find them somewhere permeant." Marilla told Anne.
"When I lived with the Hammonds, Mrs Hammond had three sets of twins. She said they were double trouble, you think she wouldn't just learn not to try again for babies but sure enough she found out she was pregnant with a third set of twins when I was living with them." Anne said with a shake of the head, "I helped take care of them, and oh I loved twins." Anne said with a smile "they were quite different from the double trouble Mrs Hammond said they were, although I am well aware that children behave differently for their parents then they do other people, I saw that too. But then Mrs Hammond was always screaming when she had no real need to."
"These twins are quite different from the other if the letter is anything to go by."
"You said a girl and a boy?" Anne asked Marilla.
"That's right." Marilla agreed. "David and Theodora."
"Good solid names." Anne smiled. "How old are they?"
"Ten." Marilla confirmed.
"Oh that's a good age!" Anne exclaimed.
Marilla simply shook her head.
They approached the house and knocked on the door. "Mrs Smith?" Marilla asked and the women nodded.
"You must be Miss Cuthbert." She said with a smile. "Here to meet the twins?" she asked.
"That's right." Marilla confirmed. "This is Anne I adopted her last year."
"Oh then you'll be a kind of sister to them." Mrs Smith smiled. "Come with me." She said kindly to them as she led them into her front room. "Theodora." Mrs Smith said to a young girl who sat in the front room reading a book. Her back was straight her posture as if in an old book for an ten year old girl. She looked up without expression on her face. Nor happy not sad, her skin pale with big blue eyes and brown hair she was a striking beauty even for ten. "This is Miss Cuthbert and Anne."
The girl stood up "Pleased to meet you." She said barely above a whisper but didn't look up at them at all..
"Where's David?" Mrs Smith asked her.
"I.." she stuttered. "I don't know Mrs Smith." She said quietly. "I think he's in the garden." She said softly.
"Little good he'll do out there, go and get him then." Mrs Smith told Theodora who obediently walked out to find her brother. Mrs Smith shook her head "You'll never find two children less alike for siblings and twins."
"Is David very different?" Anne asked.
"Oh yes." Mrs Smith said. "David is…" she started but was interrupted by a high-level screech then scream coming from the back garden. All three of them turned and walked quickly though the house towards the scream, to find what was formally the perfectly pressed girl and another child Anne and Marilla only assumed to be David sitting black out in a puddle of mud. His hair was the opposite to his sisters a dirty blonde in colour (though to be fair they couldn't tell at the present time if it was the colour or because of the mud) his eyes wide and brown.
"David Keith!" Mrs Smith exclaimed. "explain yourself."
"I was only playing in the mud and I decided to scare Thea by being a mud monster, she slipped," David continued "and so I was only telling her its nothing to be scared of, so I got in to make her less scared." David defended.
Marilla looked to Anne who was struggling to keep a straight face, Marilla rolled her eyes.
"Who are they?" David asked.
"Well you're not in any state to be introduced now, this is Miss Cuthbert, she's meant to be giving you a possible home, she won't want to now!"
"Oh, I don't know about that, I know another girl who could get herself into pickles too." She said with a grin to Anne.
"Hello David." Anne said with a smile to him trying to put her hand out to shake it.
"I don't want no girls hand." He objected. "Girls have got the lurgy. I don't want to catch it!" he told her.
"David!" Mrs Smith said.
"No that's alright." Anne said quickly pulling back her hand. "Duly noted." She looked at him and said "Was your mud monster the one with two heads?" she asked David.
He looked in shock that someone older then himself was taking him seriously. "Have you met a two-headed monster?"
"I did once though it was a while ago he told me that they were becoming more and more rare."
"Ah no!" David exclaimed. "Not this one!" he said.
Mrs Smith finally chirped in "you better go and get cleaned up David, so Miss Cuthbert and Anne don't mistake you as a monster. You too Thea," Mrs Smith added, "You can use the en-suite bathroom in my bedroom if you like."
"Do you think Marilla will adopt them?" Diana asked Anne the next day while the foursome headed into school together on the Monday morning.
"Honestly…" Anne said with a shrug "I really don't know." She finished sadly. "I can only wish she will."
Diana turned to Fred and started talking to him as Anne went quiet walking for a good five minutes without saying a word to Gilbert. "You know, not every kid in the system gets lost." Gilbert tried.
"No," She admitted "I guess not." She sighed "but the older you are the less likely people want you." She said quietly. "I was already three when… people want cute little babies, not three-year olds."
"That's insane." Gilbert said then knowingly said "I could take a guess and say you were a cute three-year-old."
"Like you'd know!" she told him slapping him playfully on his arm.
Anne and Gilbert were busy studying when Marilla brought the twins home.
"I remember you." David said to Anne "You believed in my mud monster."
"Yes I did, and my name is Anne, remember? We were introduced that day."
"Yeah Anne." He agreed. "Is this your boyfriend?" he asked her.
"No David." Anne told him rolling her eyes at yet again her and Gilbert were romantic partners. "He is my best friend though."
"I told you its Davy." He said with a sigh to Anne. "It feels better being called that." He looked to Gilbert in surprise "Your best friend is a girl?" he asked Gilbert. "I'd thought you wouldn't care for my mud monster if I'm honest." He said inspecting Gilbert again. "Do you play football?" he asked.
"Yes." Gilbert confirmed "I'm captain of my football team."
"Really are they any good?" David asked.
"Best one in the county." Gilbert said with a smile. "I'm Gilbert."
"I've Davy Keith and that's Thea, my sister." He said pointing at the quiet girl who coward at the spotlight being on her. "Can you play football with me too Gilbert." He then leaned over and whispered to Gilbert "It'll get you away from the pretense of enjoying studying."
Gilbert chuckled and then said to him "But I do."
Davy nodded "That's good!" he exclaimed. "You almost had me believing it." To which Gilbert and Anne both openly laughed at.
Marilla finally trailed behind them, telling the boy "Go up the stairs two rooms immediately on your left will be yours and Theodora's." She informed them. "You may pick who gets which one. Off you go." She said sitting down in the rocking chair.
"How was the journey?" Anne asked Marilla whose eyes rolled.
"He's got ants in his pants that boy." To which she got a laugh from both Anne and Gilbert. "The bus was throwing him back and forth I was worried he would break his neck or tumble down the bus. I didn't know what to do so I tried to discipline him, threatened to whip him at one point…" to which Anne looked up distressed at Marilla "And don't look at me like that young lady, you know I wouldn't. And you know what he did? He climbed into my lap, flung his arms about my neck and gave me a bear-like hug and told me 'I don't believe you mean it,'" she shook her head "and then he grabbed my cheeks as if I were a child and said 'You don't LOOK like a lady who'd whip a little boy just because he couldn't keep still. Didn't you find it awful hard to keep still when you were only 's old as me?"
To which both Anne and Gilbert laughed.
"'No,' I told him. 'I always kept still when I was told,'" said Marilla, Anne could tell from her tone she had tried to speak sternly, albeit Anne knew Marilla would have been caving under David's impulsive caresses.
"'Well, I s'pose that was 'cause you was a girl,' he said. You WAS a girl once, I s'pose, though it's awful funny to think of it. Thea can sit still . . . but there ain't much fun in it I don't think. Seems to me it must be slow to be a girl. Here, Thea, let me liven you up a bit.' He tells her." Marilla continued her narrative, "Turns out his method of "livening up" was to grasp Theodora's curls in his fingers and give them a tug. Theodora's shrieked and then cried." Marilla's eyes rolled. "Were you as lively as this at his age?" Marilla asked Gilbert.
"I dare say I was." He said with a chuckle.
"His age!" Anne exclaimed, "try last year!"
"I could sit still! Gilbert defended.
"Carrots?!" Anne exclaimed by way of pointing out he had tugged at her hair.
"That was…" he trailed for a moment as his pen came up in front of him between them, him pointing it playfully at her "…a moment of desperation."
Anne grabbed the end of the pen closest to her, her face flushed her lips desperately trying not to smile "Oh you were desperate to meet me?!" She said her eyebrows raising in sync with his, his lips fighting the same smile reflecting back at her their eyes playing.
"Eager, I was eager to meet you." He said quietly blushing back from the intimacy. "He will grow out of it." Gilbert said with a blushing smile to Marilla.
Marilla let out a sigh the look on her face fading from the interaction between Anne and Gilbert "He could use a good example of a man in his life." She said carefully.
"Well I don't know about good," Gilbert said to Marilla "but I won't mind, I'm already around he won't see me as a threat."
"Its worth a shot." Marilla said with a sigh, "I better go and check they've found their rooms okay." She said leaving the two to study again.
Anne and Gilbert took a walk back to Blythe farm that night, realistically without the snow Blythe Farm was less than a mile away from Green Gables. As the two headed off there was an overcast of cloud but nothing which worried Anne enough to take a jacket.
The two friends chatted along the way about this and that, about the twins and David's insistence of being a 'Davy' now he was in Avonlea.
"I am glad though Gilbert, that you've agreed to be Davy's friend, he's a little rough round the edges but he's pure gold really." Anne said with a smile as they arrived at the veranda of the old farm house.
"It should be fun, I doubt at that age many people saw any gold in me."
"Don't be silly." Anne laughed as Mrs Blythe came out and they sat down
"Hello Anne honey." She said with a smile then she kissed her son's curls.
"Hello Mrs Blythe." She said with a smile.
"How are the twins settling in?" she asked Anne.
"As well as can be expected." Anne admitted. "We were just talking about the boy, Davy."
"He could be my younger brother." Gilbert said with a grin to his mother "the way he behaves."
"Was Gilbert really so lively?" Anne asked.
"Barely able to keep him down." Mrs Blythe laughed. "We kept him going with farm work though."
"That's right you said you helped around the farm." Anne said remembering what Gilbert told her.
"Yeah." He said with a smile. "Up at the crack of dawn and milking the cows bailing the hay, even before I went to school."
"I'll go and get you some cookies for your journey home Anne." Mrs Blythe smiled.
"No Mrs Blythe…" she started. Gilbert nudged her and shook his head to Anne.
"Tell you what, take home some carrot cake for the twins, it has on my special frosting." She called as she went in the house. To which Gilbert grinned shaking his head.
"I've told you before about that." He said with a grin to Anne.
"I keep forgetting." Anne smiled. "Your mom is a real mom." Anne said with a smile rubbing her arms a little.
"Cold?" Gilbert asked her.
"Just a little." She admitted.
He chivalrously took his Leatherman's jacket off. "No Gil, you don't need to…" she started but the jacket came around her.
"Don't be silly. Its my house, I have a dozen other jumpers upstairs." He said coming back round her and looking at her.
The Leatherman's jacket on him was a slimline fit jacket with a hoodie. The school colours green and gold played on Anne's skin and hair. The green brought out not only the titan tints in her hair but the green specks which perplexed him. The gold contrasted with the paleness of her skin but also brought out some golden tone in her hair the sight of which caught Gilbert off guard and he gasped.
"what's wrong?" she asked him.
"No n-nothing." He said quietly and he sat on the chair behind him. "You suit that jacket better than me." He finished.
"Oh." She said with a slight blush. "Thanks." She then laughed "Pity they personalized it with your last name I could have stolen it from you."
He laughed back and blushed slightly but he didn't object an hour later as she left with the carrot cake and his jacket still on her back.