The week passes and Anne barely notices, her stay extended on instruction from her team back home who heard about her illness and the inevitable delays it had caused. Now the days were blurring together as she focused on her work and tried to catch up with what she'd missed. She's thankful to realize when she returns to the ward a few days later that the nurses have taken pity on her and now answer her questions without much negotiation.

Racing to catch up, she tries to ensure she sits down for at least one meal a day, her usual requirement when she was on mission and trying to tackle the amount of work she needed to accomplish in a short amount of time. But this mission was harder - her bout of stomach sickness turned her off the of the dining area and she wasn't particularly hungry when the weather warmed every afternoon, her body now almost solely relying on Powerbars and rehydration packs.

"Anne, I've got some toast here if you want it," Gilbert calls to her one morning, leaning forward and watching as she opens the fridge to stare into it. It was her usual morning routine - a pang of hunger would hit right after the morning meeting and she'd wander into the kitchenette, stare at the food, and then proceed to go to work without eating anything. He'd watched it happen for a few days now, curious as she seemed to be reluctant to settle on eating anything at all.

"Thanks, but I'm good," she replies quickly and closes the fridge door, turning to head towards the clinic area without grabbing so much as a bottle of water. Rolling his eyes, he gets to his feet and grabs the toast from his plate, chasing after her down the pathway and easily catching up to walk alongside her.

"Here," he offers, holding the lightly buttered bread out towards her. She glances up at him briefly and then looks away, taking the crust between her fingers and holding it at her side as they walk. "You should probably eat it before you go into the patient care area, you know, to try to prevent getting sick again."

Her grey eyes snap up to his, a scowl on her features as she slows her step. Defiantly she takes a bite and then holds the bread back out to him. "Happy?" She says around the food in her mouth. His grin widens and he grabs her hand, placing the bread back at her lips.

"Eat the whole thing," he challenges her, stopping them both before they cross through the makeshift gate of the clinic. The look he wears on his face is knowing, his eyes gentle as he watches her take a few bites and swallow it back. "You're not eating, are you?"

"I am eating," she growls in return, waving the bread in his face as she crosses her arms over her chest.

"No, you're not. I eat in a day what you've eaten since you got here - "

"I was sick!" She interjects to his consternation, his eyes rolling as she argues back.

"You're starting to look like shit, Anne," he groans, lifting his hands animatedly as she looks taken aback. "You've got bags under your eyes and you're bitchy to everyone here. I haven't known you that long and even I can see you've dropped a couple pounds without even trying. You've gotta eat on mission, it's a marathon, not a sprint."

She takes in his commentary with a stoic look on her face, her mouth chewing the bread more than necessary to keep her tongue from lashing out at him the way she wants to in that moment. "Well, that's kind of a rude way to put it, but thank you for the observation. I appreciate your concern," she replies evenly and shoves the remaining bites of toast into her mouth before leaving him to stand at the gate and watch her walk away.

Frustrated, Anne loses him among the tents and begins interviewing the intake team, eventually breaking for lunch when they do and heading towards the kitchen. She spots Gilbert already there preparing a sandwich, his eyes watching her as she grabs a bottle of water and comes to sit at the tables with the team.

"You see, the challenge isn't coming here, it's when you go back home and trying to explain your experience," Jerry laments, diving into his cup of soup with a flourish. Anne leans back in her chair and spins the water bottle in her hands, listening to the team debate her questions.

"How's everyone's day going?" Gilbert breaks in, sliding into a chair beside her and setting a plate down in front of her. Toast and a banana, the familiar BRAT diet items making her glare at him as he focuses on the conversation he's just invited himself into. Reluctantly she picks up the toast and eats it, knowing that if she didn't the damn man would follow her throughout the day until she finished it.

"Blythe, are you in to watch the football match tonight?" Ruby asks as the conversation lulls, her hand lifting to Gilbert's shoulder as she looks up at him innocently. Anne does her best to look unaffected, turning her attention to peeling the banana and looking anywhere but at the two people beside her. The small pang of jealousy that lights in her gut again makes her squirm, getting to her feet abruptly and walking off towards the camp entrance and leaving the kitchen behind.

The security at the gate warns her back from the street and she relents, choosing instead to lean against the fence and watch the chaotic traffic pass for the rest of the lunch period. When the break is over she returns to patient intake and refocuses on their work.

By early evening she's exhausted and she grabs her e-reader from her gear and tucks herself away in one of the corners of the camp, settling in to relax with a cheesy murder mystery against the bright orange fencing. Time slips by and soon the light is too low to keep reading and she finds herself wandering the site. In the distance she can hear the group settling in the dining area, their dinner being served to boisterous laughter. Part of her wishes she were there, involved in the group and the jokes, but another part of her felt like she was imposing, like her role here wasn't as necessary as the others and she was just here to make their jobs harder.

Reluctantly, Anne turned to head back to her tent, ready to turn in for the night and recharge to face tomorrow as a new day.

"Going to bed already?" Diana calls to her, jogging to her side and linking their arms together as they walk.

"Was thinking about it. I'm beat," she lies, shrugging as the girl practically skips alongside her.

"Don't be ridiculous. You're not going to bed, I won't allow it. Come have dinner and watch the football game with us. It's the final, so apparently that's a big deal," she rambles, pulling them off course and leading Anne towards the dining area.

"I'm not super hungry though," Anne protests, clutching her e-reader tighter in her hand as they near the dining area. She couldn't quite put a finger on why she was so nervous to join the group until she walked in and found Ruby covering Gilbert's eyes, a wide smile on her face as Jane spooned something off of his plate and into his mouth.

"That is most definitely creamed corn," he shouts, pulling away Ruby's hands and looking down at his plate. "See - I've got this in the bag!" He continues loudly, his smile widening as his eyes fall on Diana and Anne entering the dining area.

"They play this every night. Gilbert is notoriously bad at identifying food correctly," Diana explains as she grabs two platefuls of food and steers them towards the table. They watch as Ruby moves along the table, her hands covering everyone's eyes eventually as Jane spoons surprise items into everyone's mouths. More often than not the group dissolves into laughter, the guesses so poor that even Anne finds her mood lightening as the evening progresses. She even manages to stomach almost a quarter of the plate, though in the end she still drinks more water than necessary to fill her up.

"I'm going to setup the stream for the game," Gilbert says over her shoulder as she washes her plate. She glances back at him, her brow furrowed. "If you wanted to help me?"

"Oh," she replies, setting her items down to dry and turning around to face him more fully. Behind him Diana is talking with Ruby and Jane, still seated at the table and working through their dessert. "I wasn't really - "

"Come on, I can't do this on my own. I need someone smarter than me," he says as his hands make quick work of cleaning his own dishes. Bumping his arm affectionately into hers, he shoots her a charming smile that disarms her and leaves her fumbling for words.

Her, Anne Shirley Cuthbert, lost for words. What are the chances.

"Fine. But only because I think it'll be entertainment of the purest variety," she concedes and follows him back towards the meager 'lounge' area they've setup with a collection of plastic chairs and a white tent wall pulled tight in front of a projector.

Gilbert sets to work immediately, grabbing the laptop from the tech box and turning on the device. When the light doesn't immediately appear on screen he scrunches his face, tapping the keys to login and hopefully wait it out. Anne watches with a raised brow, her hands on her hips as he mumbles to himself and tries pressing the power button on and off again.

"What the devil?" He growls, tapping the machine and trying to bring it to life with a few light pats. Eventually Anne can't contain her laughter anymore and she walks to the corner, picking up the extension cord and making a show of plugging it into the hanging powerstrip. "Well, don't I look foolish," he groans, turning his attention back to the computer and searching for the pre-show.

"I couldn't watch you start to fall apart over a projector not working," she chides, coming to sit next to him as he logs into his home desktop. She tries not to notice the conversations that pop up on his screen, the smiling faces beaming out at her as greetings start rolling in. One in particular appears multiple times, her face bright in each flash of her message and Anne feels a light pang of jealousy re-appear in her gut.

This had to stop already before she lost her damn mind. Getting to her feet abruptly she wandered the edges of the tent, looking over the DVD cases and used books that lined the shelves. A well-loved copy of Jane Eyre catches her eye and she grabs it, flipping to the chapter that had been torn out of her first copy in a spate of anger by girls in the group home she'd lived in before moving to the Cuthbert's. Her heart soars as she reads through the familiar pages, tears pricking at her eyes as she recalls the misery she'd felt when they'd burned her copy in the yard.

"Anne?" Gilbert repeats, moving to join her near the shelf before resting his hand on her shoulder. She jumps under the contact and drops the book to the ground, snapping her gaze up to him in surprise. Without prompting he removes his hand and reaches down to grab the book, turning it over before glancing up towards her. "Jane Eyre? I didn't pit you for a Brontë reader," he says kindly, offering it back to her.

"What does that mean?" She asks sharply, holding the book to her chest.

"Just - I guess, I don't really know. You seem... " He pauses, as though weighing his words before he speaks them. "You don't seem like a romance kind of girl, I guess."

"Just because I fucked a stranger once in an airport doesn't mean I don't like romance, Gil," she growls before stalking out of the lounge and towards her tent. The tears come hotly to her eyes, the insult adding to her tumultuous memories as she tries desperately not to start crying.

"Anne - come on," Gilbert calls, jogging to catch her and grasping at her arm. "That's obviously not what I meant." She shakes him loose and spins on her heel, her finger poking sharply into his chest.

"Don't! Don't play with me, Doctor Blythe. You keep looking at me like that and saying these things but I'm not blind. I see everything else going on around us and I don't have time to play games!" She seethes, a tear slipping out and causing her to groan with frustration at the weight of it all.

"I'm not playing any games, Anne," he counters measuredly, though his tone softens with the frailty he sees in her expression.

"I asked you at the airport if you were with anyone and you said no, did you not?" She presses, glancing around them to ensure no one would hear her pathetic accusations. She really should have covered more than just glib wit and impersonal stories back at the airport, maybe then she wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe he would have already moved on from her red-headed orphan self.

"I did. I'm not," he replies and crosses his arms over his chest, unwilling to give into whatever was going through her head.

"Then who is Mary? Why does she call you 'love' and send you a million messages while you're away?" Gilbert barks out a laugh as she continues, her anger thwarted by his quick change in demeanor.

"Mary? Really? She's like my mother! That's why she sends me a barrage of messages when I log on. She's worried sick about me coming out here 'cause she thinks I'll get killed or get hit by a bus or something. I wasn't lying, Anne," he whispers the last part, his knuckle brushing softly against her cheek and catching the wayward tear. "Come back and watch the game. Relax. Have some snacks and you'll start to feel better. I promise."

She closes her eyes at the ridiculousness of her thoughts, her mind going haywire as he reaches towards her. "I'm sorry that I jumped to conclusions. It's just - that book means a lot to me. It was one of the things that got me through my years at the group home - "

"Group home?" He interjects, squeezing her hand as she looks away briefly.

"My parents died when I was just a baby. I bounced around a lot until the Cuthbert's took me in. It was a shitty way to grow up."

"We've got that in common then," Gilbert says softly, watching as the admission comes over her. She shifts and wipes at her eyes before looking back up to him.

"What do you mean?" She prods and he smiles sadly before looking away and rubbing his chin.

"My mother died giving birth to me and my father died of lung cancer when I was a teenager. We're both orphaned."

"Oh, I'm so sorry Gil," she murmurs, shifting on her feet as he looks down at her. She hadn't expected that, not from the way he'd seemed so confident and carefree. Her perceptions, so frequently spot on, were failing her now and it left her feeling off-kilter.

"It's okay. It was a long time ago," he replies and shrugs.

"I don't mean to be like this. I'm just stressed and exhausted and for some reason I feel too much around you and it's just fucking - ugh!" He chuckles as she groans, his hands holding tightly to hers.

"Watch the game with me. Take a break from the work and just try to decompress. It'll help and maybe you won't get so caught up up here," he says and grazes his hand along her temple. With a brief nod of her head she follows him back to the lounge and settles herself at a table to start flipping through the pages of the book as he finishes setting up.

"Hey Anne," he calls and she looks up, meeting his eyes across the space and smiling as he grins towards her. "Check out these photos," he requests and opens his Facebook to an album labelled 'family'. Inside it are hoards of pictures, Gilbert and a man and woman when they were all younger, the couple grouped together as Gilbert wears graduation robes. "This is Bash and Mary. They billeted me through university when I was having a hard time making ends meet. They pretty much adopted me after my father died."

Anne watches the photos pass and finds herself getting up from her seat, sliding onto the small plastic chair next to him as he tells her about his parents and the life he'd lived. At some point her hand finds its way to his, their fingers weaving together as he laughs and jokes about the last decade of his life and the scrapes he'd managed to get himself in and out of. Eventually she tells him about her years in the system, what coming to live with Matthew and Marilla had meant to her, how Matthew's death had driven her to write her first book. Throughout the time they find themselves on even ground, an understanding blooming between them as they recount the hard and the good times.

"I'm not playing games, Anne," he whispers as the slideshow loops again, his gaze turning towards her and locking his focus. "There is some weird connection here between us that I've never had before and I have no idea what I'm going to do when I leave in a few weeks and you don't come with me."

Swallowing thickly she twists under his stare, her own heart thumping heavily in her chest as she tries to think of something - anything! - to say.

"I thought we were watching football not sharing baby pictures!" Billy grumbles as the team starts wandering into the lounge. Anne is the first to pull back, getting to her feet and taking some of the snacks that Diana is juggling from her hands under the guise of being helpful.

"We are, we are!" Gilbert responds loudly, turning back to the laptop and toggling the screen back to the pre-game show that he's connected to. "I've got it all set to go, see?"

"What about the sound, bud?" Billy continues, tossing a piece of popcorn at the back of Gilbert's head.

"I just have to plug it in," Anne replies for him, carrying over the speakers from the shelf and setting them on the table as Gilbert takes the cord and plugs it into the computer. Before she can wander away once more he grasps at her pant leg, his gaze shooting up to hers with a tentative smile. She gets the message and sits in the seat nearest him, motioning for Diana to come join her on the other side as he hides his blinding smile against his chest. The sound of the crowd bursts through the speakers and the team cheers, settling into their seats with their hidden beverages to enjoy the game.