Chapter Text
Anne fell back onto her bed, clutching a bundle of letters close to her chest. Her boots were strewn across the floor and her red hair was a mess around her. Saturdays were not fun days for her. She used to savour every day of her weekends. As much as she enjoyed the challenge of the school and now college, the weekends gave her imagination free range. Now though, they served as a reminder that boy she loved was 800 miles away and she would have to wait a while until they were reunited.
It had been a month and a half since Anne had been at Queens. A month and a half since she had seen Gilbert. And it would be another month and a half until she could see him again. Whilst she was able to make a trip back to Avonlea and Green Gables when she was feeling especially homesick, Gilbert wasn’t able to visit on a whim. His trip home needed to be planned out and there was no way he was able to visit during term time without missing some of his classes.
The thought made Anne’s heart clench. Six weeks felt too far away. She knew that if she were to write a letter to Gilbert, telling him how much she wanted him with her right now. How much she wanted him to visit, even if it were only for a day, then he would do it. He’d do whatever he could to come and see her. But Anne knew that it would be selfish of her to do that. He needed to focus and made the most of the opportunities that Toronto was presenting him. Anne would have mentioned it to him but she already held a lot of residual guilt about Gilbert’s situation.
Toronto was by no means a bad university. It was one of the best he could have gone to but it was no Sorbonne. Anne couldn’t help but feel like it was her fault that he wasn’t studying there. That she had held him back from greatness. She began chewing on her lip as she thought about it, her eyes beginning to burn. He had opted to stay in Canada. To study here. To not marry Winnie. To court Anne. He gave up on a beautiful life in Paris. Studying at one of the best medical programs and married to a woman that exuded grace and elegance.
So, no. Anne would not allow herself to fall apart over the fact that she couldn’t see Gilbert every weekend. Or at least, she wouldn’t allow Gilbert to know she was falling apart about it. He’d worry and there was no need for that.
Pushing herself up, so she was leaning against her pillow, Anne began to leaf through the letters he had sent her. Anne often found it hard to reply to him. She always ended up writing him two letters. One would be everything she wished she could tell her. Her whole heart bared on a page. Paragraphs dedicated to how much she missed him. What she planned for them to do together over Christmas. Letting him know how her heart beat for him and him alone. The second was much more brief. Straightforward answers to his questions about Queens and their friends. A simple, “I miss you too” tagged to the end of the letter. In between were a multitude of questions about his studies, she made sure that the conversation would mainly rest on him and his new life in Toronto. The first letter was added to a collection that she kept in a box under her bed. The second was the one that she would send.
Anne’s eyes swept over Gilbert’s most recent letter. She had been meaning to reply to it since it arrived on Thursday but a flurry of assignments had left her exhausted and with little free time. Hauling herself out of her, Anne sat down at the desk she and Diana shared with her fountain pen at the ready. Running her hand down the blank sheet of paper, she began work on the letter she would never send him.
After writing two double backed pages, Anne sighed and put her fountain pen down. She’d had a lot to get off of her chest. Gilbert had asked how everything was going with her assignments, trying to make sure she wasn’t stressed out too much. He had written to say how much he had missed her. How the Autumn air had made him think of her and how he remembered her talking about the way she loved the auburn leaves on the trees, making her feel a little less alone with her hair colour.
She pulled the box out from under the bed and took out all of the letters. It had become quite the thick set of papers. Anne shuffled them to tidy them up as she put her latest letter at the back.
“I miss you dearly, Gil but I really do hope you’re having the best time in Toronto,” she gently whispered as she began to put the letters back in the box.
“Anne, you have to-” Diana burst through the door laughing before she spotted Anne kneeling by her bed, letters still in her hands.
“Is everything okay?” Seeing the distraught look on her bosom friend's face had stopped her in her tracks and she immediately knelt down beside her. “Are those letters from Gilbert? Oh, Anne, I’m so sorry. Having the boys call in on the weekend must be so tough on you. I’m sorry I hadn’t realised earlier.”
Anne hadn’t told Diana about the letters. Of course she knew that Anne and Gilbert regularly exchanged correspondence but she didn’t know that Anne always wrote two letters.
“It’s fine, Di. I don’t mind, I was just doing some tidying.” Anne stumbled over her words and she began stuffing the letter into the box quicker, not realising one had fallen from the pile.
“You know, I’ve always thought it quite romantic how you and Gilbert write letters to each other. Your love spanning so many miles…” There was a dreamy look on Diana’s face as she picked up the letter to hand back to Anne. “I bet they’re all full of sweet nothings. You and Gilbert just proclaiming your love to one another. I can understand why you’d want to keep them all safe, Anne. Something to show your grandchildren,” she let out a little giggle before her eyes quickly danced across the page in her hand.
“Anne…” Diana furrowed her brow. “Why does this say ‘Dear Gilbert’?”
Wide eyed, Anne opened and closed her mouth as her brain tried to compute a believable excuse. “Uh, I must have gotten it mixed up with the letter he had sent me. Marilla always says that I don’t pay close enough attention to things.” She laughed nervously, reaching out to grab the letter from Diana’s hands but her friend moved away.
“It’s dated four weeks ago, Anne and I know you’ve definitely written letters to him since then. I’ve watched you. I went to the post office with you.”
As Anne scrambled for yet another excuse, Diana took the opportunity to grab the other letter that were In Anne’s hand. She began to rifle through the letter, her confusion growing as she kept seeing Gilbert’s name at the top of the page and the dates.
“Anne, what are these?” She looked up to see Anne with a guilty look on her face.
“It’s nothing, Diana,” Anne tried to reach for the letters again but Diana moved away and sat on the edge of her bed, making sure the door was shut.
“Anne Shirley Cuthbert, I know when you’re lying to me. What is going on with you? What are all these letters and why are they in a box that I’ve never seen before?”
Covering her face with her hands, Anne took a moment to compose herself. Her eyes were slightly teary as she finally removed her hands from her face and took a seat next to Diana.
“They’re letters to Gilbert,” her voice barely came out as a squeak.
Diana arched a brow, lips pursed. “I gathered as much, Anne but what are they doing here? I thought you were sending them to Gilbert. I don’t understand.”
She had tried to run through a number of different situations in her head but couldn’t come to a clear conclusion from any of them. She’d seen Anne sat at the desk during the evenings scribbling away to Gilbert. She’d been with Anne when they went to the post office to send the letter. Anne always wondering aloud when he would get his letter and when she would receive her next. But the stack of letters that she saw today… It was a thick pile. There were letters dated back to their first week of Queens and none of it made sense.
“I-” Anne took a deep breath, giving her the chance to gather her thoughts. “I’ve been writing two different letters to Gilbert. I send one and I keep the other in that box. The ones that you have in your hand…”
“But why? Do you want to keep a copy of them?”
“No, it’s not that… I- I don’t know, Di. I go to write to him and I spill all of my thoughts and feelings on the page. I tell him how much I miss him. How much I want him to be here. That I can’t wait to see him again… And then I end up feeling guilty at the thought of sending him all of that…” She’d turned away to look out of the window, now wanting Diana to see the tears that had started to stream down her face.
“Feel guilty? Anne, I’m sure he would love to hear you say all of that. That boy has been in love with you for years and all you’ve done for years is argue with him. I’m sure he would savour every ‘I miss you’ that you’d send.”
Anne got up and walked towards the window, her arms hugging her waist tight. “But that’s the point, Diana. If I tell him that I miss him, or that classes have been difficult, or how much I wished so badly that he could be standing next to me right now then he would worry and he doesn’t deserve that.” She finally let out a sob that she had been holding back.
Diana rushed to her friend’s side, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Oh, Anne, how long have you been feeling like this?” She felt awful that she hadn’t noticed what was going on.
“Since the start,” Anne sniffled, resting her head on Diana's shoulder.
She was grateful that she could finally let everything out. Diana guided her back to the bed and Anne began to tell her everything that she had been fighting with over the last six weeks. How inadequate she felt when she thought of Winifred. How she felt like she had taken the chance of a lifetime away from Gilbert. Diana listened intently, nodding and taking it all in.
When Anne finally stopped, looking exhausted, Diana slowly began to speak. “Anne, you can’t hold yourself responsible for the decisions that Gilbert has made. Even before the two of you had begun courting he had opted to break things off with Winifred and attend UofT. None of that would have changed if I hadn’t told him about your letter on the train and he hadn’t come to find you. He would still be attending UofT and you would still be here, the only difference is you’d both be miserable, thinking that your love was unrequited.”
Anne shook her head, not willing to listen to Diana. “But it’s still my fault. If I had never been in the picture then he would have been married to Winifred. Diana, I love him and you have no idea how glad I am that he loves me back but I made a vow to myself to try and make it up to him. To make up all the opportunities that he lost because of me in some kind of way. I may not be able to get him to the Sorbonne but I can try and make his life easier.”
Diana knew that there was no getting through to Anne when she was like this. She was the most stubborn person she knew. Trying to push this issue would only lead to Anne digging her heels in even more.
“What exactly are you sending him in your letter then?” Diana was still curious as to what Anne was actually communicating with Gilbert.
“Well, I tell him that I miss him as well but mostly I just let him know that everything is fine here , update him on everyone and just ask him a lot of questions about his studies and Toronto.”
Diana felt something deflate inside of her. She had fully brought into the romance of the young couple’s correspondence and now she found out that Anne’s letters were almost businesslike in their nature. She couldn’t imagine how Gilbert would feel.
“Anne, don’t you think he wants to hear more from you? Instead of something so… so clinical. You’re one of the most passionate people I know, Anne Shirley Cuthbert. You love so fiercely and doesn’t Gilbert deserve to experience some of that?”
Anne quickly stood up, her anger beginning to flare. “You don’t understand, Diana! I’m doing this for his own good. When he’s done with medical school everything will be fine but at this very moment, I know what I’m doing is right.”
Diana stood up to come at eye level with her best friend. “You know what I think? I think you’re scared of being hurt so you’re trying not to get too close to the boy who’s been head over heels in love with you for years. I think that you don’t have enough confidence in yourself to know that you’re an extraordinary woman that any man would be proud of courting and yes, that includes Gilbert Blythe. I don’t think that you can wrap your head around the fact that Gilbert doesn’t care about Paris or riches, all he wants is you. You both are meant to be and I don’t know what else needs to happen for you to see that. You aren’t doing him a favour by keeping him at arm’s length, Anne. If anything, you’re going to be hurting him even more and I don’t know if I can sit back and watch you ruin something so beautiful.”
Without giving Anne the chance to reply, Diana stormed out of their room and left the boarding house. She had stood up for Anne on the train to Queens, giving Gilbert a piece of her mind for hurting Anne. Helping him when they realised that this had all been one huge misunderstanding and now it felt like Anne was throwing it all away. But she wasn’t giving up on this and the first thing she needed to do was write a letter to Gilbert and figure out how he was feeling about everything.