Hi everyone!

Part of this chapter has only very recently been written, a good part of it actually part of this chapter was meant to be with the next chapter but making up a full chapter. But, I'm glad I've written in what I have, The whole start with Captain Jim was only just written in, but I think it was needed to be in, so we could learn more about this Captain Jim and he could start playing a bigger part in Anne and Gilbert's life.

Yes, so most of this chapter is the 'almost not' chapter.

Thank you for all the reviews, I know its a long story and you're all patience with me, hopefully I'm making it worth your while.

love

Carrots x

"Hello Anne." Captain Jim said to her as she opened the door.

"Captain Jim!" Anne said with a smile, "What a lovely surprise!" she exclaimed softly "what can I do for you?"

"Not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you." He said. "I know that Doctor Blythe is out making up some hours, Mrs Blythe has gone home, I know Cornelia is busy with, well life along with Mrs Leslie." He acknowledged "thought you might like the company?" he asked Anne.

"If by company you mean yours I'd much rather have it than be alone," said Anne, smiling. Then she sighed. "its funny I never before minded being alone. Now I dread it. When I feel alone now I feel so dreadfully alone." She sighed "Makes me want for Gilbert more, when we're together we're not alone in it, but I can't..." she trailed as they sat.

He nodded looking out at the open window "Its a nice view up here, we don't get this view on the bottom floors." He admitted "Give you plenty of scope to dream."

Oh-dreams," sighed Anne. "I can't dream now, Captain Jim-I'm done with dreams."

"Oh, no, you're not, Anne-oh, no, you're not," said Captain Jim meditatively. "I know how you feel just now-but if you keep on living you'll get glad again, and the first thing you know you'll be dreaming again-thank the good Lord for it! If it wasn't for our dreams they might as well bury us. How'd we stand living if it wasn't for our dream of immortality? And that's a dream that's bound to come true, Anne. You and your doctor, you'll see your little Joyce again some day."

"Will she be our baby? Will we know her? How shall we know her?" she asked. "You see Captain Jim, so many questions all running around my head, not knowing an answer to it."

He nodded understandingly "Did I ever tell you about my Maggie?

"No." Anne said quietly. "Who was she?"

He smiled "I suppose I can't stand the thought that once I'm gone, no one will remember her." He said thoughtfully. "She was my wife." He admitted. Anne's eyebrows shot up surprised "You're surprised, well you should be." He said with a wry smile. "We were married at eighteen, very young yes, but she was like yourself, she had no parents, but I met her at school and we were inseparable and in love. We were married only three months before she disappeared, and I spent months trying to find her." He said quietly He took a deep breath, "the police thought I might have killed her at first but with such lack of evidence, as there was none, it was soon dropped, but she disappeared, still to this day no one knows where she went." He told her "Lost, is what they called her." He said quietly. "To me, I suppose now, it was such a long time ago that it almost doesn't matter if she's alive anymore, more that she's found." He told Anne, "but she's alive in here." He said putting his hand over his heart.

"Captain Jim, why have you not told about her in your life book? Owen showed me his first copy." Anne asked him.

"I should." He nodded, "its hard to talk to people about her, you have to know loss to understand." He told Anne. "But I can't help but think Anne, even though I long ago left England, I'll find her sometime, Anne-I'll find her sometime, even if its not in this life . She's waiting for me. I wish I could tell you just how she looked, but I can't. I've seen a fine, silvery mist hanging over the bar at sunrise that seemed like her-and then again I've seen a white birch in the woods back yander that made me think of her. She had pale, brown hair and a little white, sweet face, and long slender fingers like yours, Anne, only browner. Sometimes I wake up in the night and hear the sea calling to me in the old way, and it seems as if lost Margaret called in it. And when there's a storm and the waves are sobbing and moaning I hear her lamenting among them. And when they laugh on a gay day it's her laugh-lost Margaret's sweet, roguish, little laugh. The world took her from me, but some day I'll find her. Anne, It can't keep us apart forever."

"I am glad you have told me about her," said Anne. "I have often wondered why you had lived all your life alone."

"I couldn't ever care for anyone else. Lost Maggie, took my heart with her-out there," he admitted "much like you and the doctor." He said with a smile. "It must have pulled at his heart, loosing your baby, and almost you." He said to Anne to he could tell was pondering his words "don't go forgetting him."

It was a couple of hours later Gilbert came back home, delighted Anne had company he talked to Captain Jim for a while before Captain Jim took his leave.

Anne watched Gilbert for a second before she said to him "Captain Jim told me of his loss today." Before she proceeded to tell him the story of lost Maggie. "Do you suppose you ever get over loss?" she asked Gilbert.

"No." Gilbert said shaking his head, "I don't think you do, I don't think the pain really goes." He admitted. He looked at her and asked "what kept you going?" he questioned as she looked up surprised at the question "those couple of weeks I shut down, what kept you going?" he asked.

She sighed and thought before she answered "everything had spiralled out of control." She admitted "and my whole world was falling apart, I clung to the few things I had control over, school, work, funnily even the little amounts I was eating all of it what I could control I did, even if there was no reason to." She shrugged "I guess its why I continued to take my birth control pill." She admitted.

"Oh my god!" he exclaimed "my god we would have been unprotected!"

She chuckled slightly "We would have been if it was left to you!" she quipped then more seriously added "but I could control it, it was something else I could control." She confirmed.

He shook his head "just as well." He said shaking his head. "That would have been..." he trailed almost shivering.

"Heart wrenching." Anne finished for him. "Why did you stop?" she asked him.

He thought a moment before he confessed "I tried, I had tried to control, everything, those first few weeks, and it seemed like everything which I had tried to control, wasn't being controlled, I tried to control my own heartache through work, socializing, through stunts, through..." he swallowed and said quieter "anything other then talking about it." He admitted, "then then very thing which I thought I had succeeded in, the one thing I thought I had, you, you were gone, and I just, I couldn't get past the pain, I was blinded to time, to feeling I was stuck in that moment and I couldn't get past it." He told her looking at her sadly.

She slipped next to him, bringing his arm around her, her head to his chest. "We're making it through," she said quietly "aren't we?" she asked.

Gilbert kissed into her head "We are, my love." He told her "and I find, in her, and through her, our Joy, I find I love you more through it."

Anne smiled "As I do you."

"What are you working on tonight?" Anne asked him looking over his shoulder at his computer screen a few days later.

"Oh, my application for matching, well finishing it." He said his eyes not leaving the screen.

"Oh wow!" Anne exclaimed. "So soon?" she asked "You don't even get matched until March."

"I actually started the process before we lost Joy, luckily I was ahead of the game I already had my ERA in place, I just had to fill in my preference of residency, finish my personal statements which is what I've been doing it has to be in tomorrow."

Anne looked again at the screen "Paediatrics?" she questioned, looking at him.

He nodded looking to her for a moment "I did consider gynaecology, but it isn't just the child's development, its to do with the mother more and the field is very female orientated, for obvious reasons, I don't think too many women would be comfortable with a male doctor, which I understand, but I really wanted, after Joy, I really wanted to make a difference with smaller ones, I mean aren't they our future? Aren't they worth investing in?" he said to her.

"Very noble." Anne said with a smile. "But you know you won't get... how did Christine put it, 'all the glory and money of a surgeon'." Anne said with a smile.

"I never got into the medical field for that." He said with his lips pressed into a smile he knew she was teasing him "Its not a bad wage."

Anne smiled "Its one of the reasons I loved you. You were wanting to be a doctor for all the right reasons, you want to help, when you told me there was no consideration of the money, and believe it or not you were worried you wouldn't achieve it." She said with a proud smile. He looked back into her eyes and she whispered "You're getting into paediatric for all the right reasons," she said gazing into his eyes "for the sweetest reason." She added, "and I love you for it."

He smiled back his head titled back onto the sofa his lips reached as she leaned over and kissed him on the lips. "And this is another reason why I love you so much too," he whispered "You're willing to let me do as I wish not what you wish."

"I wish for your happiness." She told him simply.

"And I yours." He confirmed.

"Just as well we find it in each other." She said with a chuckle.

"What you up to?" he asked her "school's not back in session yet." He said his head nodding to the laptop on her stomach.

"My new story." She said quietly.

He looked to her and smiled "its about time Anne Shirley!" he exclaimed.

"Oh shush!" she said her foot coming out and tapping his shoulder in reprimand playfully. "Its been an eventful year." She reminded him.

"I mean I'm glad you're writing again." He said to her honestly "between what happened with Joy, you working at the publishers and school you just seemed too busy to be following your passion." He said to her "I don't want that for you."

"Thanks," she said quietly. "It was always there, in the back of my mind, just I hadn't really stopped long enough do anything." She admitted. "They've been very understanding at the publishing house." She admitted.

"They should be!" he exclaimed.

"And school?" she said looking at him.

Gilbert took a deep sigh "I'm lucky even to still be at medical school." He said quietly.

"Well they all love you, they don't want you to fail." She reminded him.

"I know." He agreed, "I've just seen people drop out for being behind less then two weeks..." he trailed.

"But you were ahead by at least that, all the work all the experience, all the tests all the hours you were ahead in." She said to him "which by the way I don't know how you manage."

He shrugged and looked at his laptop again "Extra hour here or there, is neither here nor there at the time, but add them up."

She smiled "this is nice." She said quietly "just us, just being us."

He grinned "Can you believe it?" he asked her, "we're doing it, all the things which were just plans all those years ago..." he trailed.

"And we're doing it together." She added.

"How else was my future going to be?" he asked her playfully, she chuckled then turned her attention back to the computer screen.