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i.)
a voice that says i'll be here, and you'll be alright
The first time is tripping over things in the dark and shaking hands, and it is everything and nothing that it should be.
She is a healer on the queen's right-hand side, fiery and independent and beautiful as she is, and he is but a young farmer travelling to this queendom with news of a plague spreading in the west that is coming towards them.
"I am the head healer. Why did I not know of this sickness before?" she snaps when he tells her, his eyes dark and serious, hands on his thighs as he kneels to pick up his fallen scrolls and papers.
"I beg your pardon, mistress," he says, voice far from submissive, "But the plague has travelled far faster than we anticipated. I suspect that in the time it has taken me to travel here, the diseased have made it to the western parts of your country by now."
"Is there a cure for this... illness?" she asks, watches the young man rise from his knees and meet her gaze. She suspects there isn't—her country is the richest in flora and the herbs growing here are rare in other places. He confirms her fears to be true when he tells her:
"If there was, I would not be here, mistress." He bows his head, something flickering in his eyes, and tightens his hold on his bag.
She nods after a moment of observing him. "Very well; you may come and study our flora in order to find a cure. Do you know how to do that, Blythe?"
He lifts his chin to look at her, made of darker and bolder lines than the queen's chief advisor can draw, and answers, "I have some knowledge of medicine and herbs."
"Then get to work."
They do not speak of the nights that she joins him in studying, relentlessly working to find a cure as the plague travels to her kingdom—it is faster than either of them anticipated, and he is one man against thousands of people spreading sickness and death everywhere they turn. The plague is spreading fast; they have dubbed it the Crimson Plague for its speed and efficiency, and for the symptoms that end in patients coughing up blood and deaths that do not allow clean burials.
It is not a time for love, nor friendship, but they build it up anyways in books shared for after the sickness ends and heated arguments turned playful banter. It is not a pure relationship, nor is it sweet, but it is built upon trust and gives Cordelia someone to depend on after all these years of keeping her burdens off of the queen's shoulders, and that is enough.
The queen is bedridden by the plague, not long after Minerva May—her sister, young and free and wild and so many things—is saved by a cure that Cordelia is unable to replicate fast enough for her childhood friend. Diana is no longer regal as she lays in bed dying, those ribbons and blue dresses gone but never forgotten, her eyes hazel and smile sweet. She seems, to Cordelia, like a child again—the same child that she had once been, the same young girl with bright eyes and empty shoulders and nothing to lose; Cordelia's soulmate—or close to one. Diana asks for stories that Cordelia hasn't told in years, and smiles and forgets she is in pain, and by the time she passes Cordelia is coughing out blood and her good doctor, her farmer boy, her dearest Blythe is lowering her into bed.
"You'll be alright," he tells her, voice gentle and soft, but his eyes are dark and grim.
"Truth," she rasps out, swallows down nothing and hacks out blood. He flinches, and shakes his head, his voice suddenly so, so tired; he cannot hide a thing from her and he knows it.
"I'm sorry," he says, "I'm so sorry," and she smiles and closes her eyes to sleep and when she awakens, everything is red, red, apologies, pleading, begging, red and—
then black, and nothingness, and sleep.
ii.)
and i don't care if i know just where i will go—
The second time, they do not make it—they're defined by the fact that she is a war prisoner declared lunatic and he a well-mannered Englishman, and they are not children.
She is standing, defiant and sharp and barefooted, in her cell when he walks in. Her nose is long and accentuated by scattered dots across her skin, her chin is high, and she fixes his gaze on him the moment he enters the asylum; one of the guards knocks into his shoulder to keep him from holding those silver eyes of hers.
"Mad, that Scot is," the guard says, his words fumbling and accented. "You don't want to tangle with the likes of her."
"I wasn't thinking about it," Gilbert responds, brushes it off, and takes a deep breath before following the guard into the room at the end of the hall.
He emerges shaking, tears left unshed for a mother plagued by a disease of madness that no one can cure, and folds his hands into his pockets without a word. He glances to the side, the guard two steps ahead, and catches sight of that same fiery hair and light eyes.
She tilts her head and presses her lips together, brows pinched. That ragged green dress of hers bunches up in her hands, those freckles dance on her cheeks in the cool autumn light like the constellations looking down on them and Gilbert knows each and every one of them without even thinking about it—
She turns away before either of them can assert a name, and perhaps that is for the better. He would rather not know the name of the young woman who dies on a Thursday morning two weeks later, scratching fictional names and dazed wonderings into her own skin.
vi.)
all that i need's this crazy feeling
The sixth time, they very nearly make it.
They live on a precipice of sorts, the two of them—a dark and handsome young man studying for a career in psychology and a fiery blonde in a big city with ink stains and writing callouses on her fingers. Sense and sensibility, they are; one who sees with his eyes and nose and ears, and one who sees with her gut and the ever-present burning in her chest.
Her eyes are green and light up with the very thought of the scope for the imagination in the people wandering through the Golden Gateway; his are dark and intense and always know what to do, and perhaps this is what makes them such a fine pairing, when they meet on the streets of New York. Of course, she does not believe it so, but she has no space to argue if she's to live without the guilt of being ungrateful for the young man saving her from being run over by horses and carriage wheels.
She gives him her utmost gratitude with the most clipped words she can manage, meets his gaze with mustered-up courage that comes from years of dealing with absolute buffoons, and flees as soon as possible—
Only to find him sitting in a chair in her favorite place far past closing time, tomes of knowledge and wondrous magic hidden in and between shelves. With the nights they spend studying together, Rosamond's breaking of the rules never usually holding much of a place in her mind, she finds that his name is Gilbert Blythe, he is nineteen, and he wants to help people.
Rosamond Montmaurency is freshly seventeen, the sharp-tongued librarian and her brother's adopted daughter, and embraces the gangly limbs and freckled skin that she is all too aware does not belong.
They decide on coffee on Thursdays, the both of them tired of tea and crowns and other things they really can't not remember, and Anne cannot pinpoint exactly when she falls; she can only remember the context of a diary entry in which she writes:
Gilbert Blythe is exceptionally insufferable. How anyone would want to spend time with him is an unfathomable question.
(She still holds both sentences to be true, but he is now only insufferable in the way he looks at her as if she holds the world and the question is only unfathomable for the fact that there are so many reasons to spend her time with Gilbert Blythe that, even now, she still cannot answer her past self.)
Rosa does not bide her time, nor does she desire waiting. A war is brewing on this eastern shore of their continent and she does not know how long she will be able to admire him before all those Americans, all the men fighting for their freedom from the British empire, take him away from her forever.
She kisses him in the library, their candles the only lights in the darkness, and it is far from sweet—she is an artist that knows the weight that the word love carries and does not blow kisses heedlessly, and he is a well-reknowned psychologist-in-training who is ever-honest and informative of everything he knows, but despite what they both know to be true, neither of them say a word.
"You know I'm to leave," he pants on their fourth week, pulling away to search her gaze frantically. "You know I have to fight for—"
"Freedom and equality," she finishes, shakes her head and feels the sting of tears. "But it won't be the end. The women, and the colored people and Native Americans—"
"They're a fight for another day," Gilbert cuts her off. "This is the battle for today. We must acquire our freedom from Britain first, and then—then we must work towards equality for all people. This, now, is just one step, and I cannot watch our country fight against the hierarchy no matter how tempting it is to stay with you."
Rosamond is crying by now, her hands clutching onto his shirt, and she knows she must look a fright—she, a golden-haired grey-eyed young woman crying into the chest of a handsome young man, both of them tucked in between bookshelves with books discarded carefully on the ground. He does not say a word more until she settles down, his fingers threading through her hair and hands gentle on her skin; Rosamond cries until she can't any longer, and sits up without bothering to wipe her cheeks dry.
"I suppose," she starts, voice hoarse, "That it's fair—for me to lose you. I must have done something to deserve this—"
"This is not fair," Gilbert interrupts, and for the first time Rosamond realizes that he is crying right alongside her. "You've done nothing wrong, Rosa. Our separation might as well be my life's undoing; you know that we have no choice and that you are not at fault here."
Rosamond frowns, and he ducks his head to meet her gaze with an attempt at a playful smile. She reaches up to tweak his nose and says, "You may be correct, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to agree with my clean slate."
Gilbert scrunches up his nose at her and laughs softly, and their sadness slips away—even if just for a moment, it's gone or invisible or whatever it may be now and it gives them room to breathe. At least until their next lives, it keeps them sane.
They are known as this, in the history archives, not famous enough to make it into school curriculums but enough to be known: Gilbert Blythe, a American Navy soldier impressed into the British army and shot down by his own people, and Rosamond Montmaurency, a poetic and romantical writer killed in the events of the war that take lives and never leave prisoners. They are not written to have known each other, nor written as to their relationship, and ultimately, they touch hands only to slip apart with the clutches of death and war at their backs.
xiv.)
a rat-tat-tat on my heart
They are on different sides of a war, and being surrounded by death has become a pattern for them.
Her eyes are dark across this battlefield, filled with bloodshed she shouldn't have had to see. She has picked up a weapon, dropped her empty bag of medicines and drawn her sword, and she is fluid with this—it is as if she has known this blade her entire life, though if Gilbert were to have learned her name, to have gotten to know her, he would know that girls who hide behind books and wondrous stories are in no part warriors.
She meets his gaze once, defiant and angry and everything Gilbert wants to know, and—
He is cut down. She fights and fights and fights, but she is no match for men who have slaughtered since their first breaths in this war.
vi.)
think i want it to stay
This time, there is just a young lady refusing to bow before a man who thinks himself king, her eyes hard and withering, the king's attention sharp.
She catches her gaze on him, once, and it's simple—eyes meeting, hands touching as he pries her fingers off the doors, and—
She is gone in the next moment to be martyrd for the rebellion and he follows in the months after, fighting not only for what he believes to be right but for the spark in the first girl's eyes that she herself turned into a blaze.
lxi.)
are you shining just for me—
The girls stand in the middle of the streets, holding signs and crying out for their rights. Red hair and bright eyes are in the center of it all, hands on her hips, elbow looped over her sign. She is shouting, leading the girls in battle cries and grand speeches, and she is magnificent here—here, her fiery hair is what makes her the leader of this strike, and she does not shy away from the truth like anyone else does.
She catches sight of dark eyes and hair as she speaks, a vest and a stack of books and papers fluttering in the wind, and there's a sudden ache in her chest she's never known so fully before—
The crowd nudges her into place and when she looks back, he is already gone.
???)
never shined so brightly.
There is no war here, but she fights because it's been woven into her copper hair and freckles and the pride in her shoulders.
She is but a girl, scrawny and forgetful but far from naïve, and this—Green Gables, this farm, with the pair of siblings who take care of her and the mansion not far away with a raven-haired girl and reassuring eyes—is home.
It's different from the last time in that her imagination is what brings back her life guides—Cordelia and Kate and Rosamond and all the others who have held her soul in their chests and wrists and smiles, turned into fairytales and pen names and imaginary friends. It's different in that there is no war, no more death or pain coming by the hundreds, and that she is neither graceful nor ladylike as her past lives had been. It's different in that for some reason here, where her lives meet on one stage, where she is ridiculed and scolded and made into a girl like fire, here is the place where her lives seem to end. This time is different from before in that this is her last.
It is not different in that the next person she meets in her horrible first weeks in Avonlea is named Gilbert Blythe and, like always, she feels that tug on her heartstrings and the ache in her chest.
In between heated debates and words of comfort spoken with fiery eyes and hearts, love creeps to her side like an old friend, a blooming golden-hearted rose. Anne will never be able to place where or when or how: she just knows that Gilbert Blythe is more than a kindred spirit.
("i should have added the 'e,'" he says, a bright smile on his lips, schoolboy crush in his eyes.)
She knows that here, now, there is no war, but there is always something to fight for—and though she alone has always known these things, has always been the only one to know exactly what to speak up about, she finds women of great character by her side this time. She finds Miss Stacy, Marilla and Diana and Josie Pye and Ka'kwet, and the rest of the people she considers great kindred spirits, male or female or otherwise.
("Women are not made whole by men," he reads aloud, finds a familiar strength and fighting spirit in her words. "Women are made whole the moment they enter this world.")
Josie with her sharp tongue and Marilla with her smart opinions make a good team; Miss Stacy and Mrs. Lynde are another, with intellect by education and social work; Cole takes his lack of education in stride with his artistry; Diana is a comfort to all, able to calm down even the worst of tempers, and Ka'kwet smart and incredible and unified with nature. Anne, with her words and temper, does not work well on her own—on her own, she is a wild young woman raised wrong, a lunatic just as the people in the place where she came from, a gawky red-haired freckle-faced maniac, her judgment skewed accordingly.
With Gilbert, she is allowed to take root and bloom, for his eloquence and ability to turn a crowd are a great benefit to when Anne turns them on herself, and they make a—she doesn't know how to describe it, a wonderful, brilliant, extraordinary—("such a good T-E-A-M," he says with a smile—) good team.
She falls in love, and by the time she realizes it he is nearly gone and almost going—
("just—one thing," he says, eyes laced in longing and hope, the both of them standing on the precipice on a cliff—)
—she has to run and reach out with both hands to catch his in them—
("i don't know what to say, i..." i'm in love with you too, but— "what am i supposed to—" do about this, me, you, us, what can i offer with who i am—)
—he meets her gaze and fire ignites beneath her fingers, and suddenly they are on that cliff again, hands shaking and voices small.
"Am I—am I able to hold you back, still?" she asks, her voice strange and foreign, and she finds Gilbert blinking at her—all dark eyes and heaving chest, lips parted in some emotion that Anne cannot describe. She stammers out something else as the train station seems to dissolve around them, adds, "Because—if you haven't proposed to Winnifred yet—and if you'd be willing to have me, I had a revelation—"
When she next turns her gaze to him, he looks for all the world as if his breath has been stolen away, and she thinks if she fails, if she is going to lose Gilbert Blythe forever, then this look of breathlessness is not one she'd mind being the last expression she sees.
"Gilbert Blythe, I'm in love with you."
He stares, and stumbles, and Anne thinks momentarily of how unfair she's made it for herself that her own humiliation will be cast upon herself and all those at the train station, but then he is stepping off the train and kissing her and she doesn't think of it for a second longer.
Anne Shirley-Cuthbert had always been drawn to Gilbert Blythe—the honest and earnest, tall and dark dancer of a young man with those warm eyes of his and more pure empathy than she knows doctors to have. It had always seemed ethereal, or ancient—something that had been carved into her bones over the ages; something that felt like life's tug on her strings of fate.
She will never know how deep the tug of her heart goes. She will never know how right she is, but she does know how right this is—Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley-Cuthbert and whoever they choose to be, with their words and matched intellect and the love between them. Often in her life, this is the only thing she knows to be true.
("I'm in love with you, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert," he says, soft and winded and every bit of Gilbert Blythe, and Anne leans up to kiss him.)