Becoming Anne Again

Chapter Forty-Two

A/N Hello my loves! Thank you so much for joining me on this journey through the back--and for sticking with me to this point! I hope you enjoy!

That night, when Anne kicked off her shoes to bury her toes in the sand, there was no respite from the cold, but it was like the sand had transformed to ice. Pain still felt good though. Pain, she knew.

She thought that maybe she would always know pain, that it would always be a comfort in its constancy. It was just different now.

She stripped off her coat, lying herself down in the sand so that goosebumps raised themselves over her exposed skin, the autumn wind breezing through her clothes. If she closed her eyes, perhaps she could imagine the wind picking her up and carrying her away, so she could fly over the colored cottages, becoming one with the elements. Maybe she was autumn, Cape Cod causing her to shed her colors, brightening before dying.

Maybe she was incredibly nihilistic and should stop thinking these thoughts.

She smiled, because since when was that even a thought that cross her mind? Since when had her self-preservation skills translated into anything but the physical, invading her mind and making her believe she could survive? It was always one day at a time. She would survive until the next evening, when she could wish upon the moon or on God or on the stars that she was just away. But then Diana came, and the days blended together, separated only by ecstasy and melancholy, and she could think past tomorrow, to dances and musicals and holidays they could spend together. But that was all gone now. She had tasted what it was like, but she wasn't satiated.

But it was like Ms. Keller said. Love sometimes meant sacrificing everything. She may always long for Diana, but she could sit on the sidelines. She could sacrifice, so Diana was happy.

It was funny, because she realized, as she heard the tell-tale shutting of the door, that she had expected Gilbert to come. In fact, she had come down to the ocean, not to simply wallow in her own thoughts, but so she wouldn't be alone. Or at least, she wouldn't be alone with the two parental figures in her life, with Samantha all worked up and swearing she was going to give Mrs. Barry a piece of her mind and Matthew worrying over her like a mother hen. She needed someone to be with, but she needed space too. Gilbert would understand.

She needed Gilbert.

She didn't look back at him as he took a seat beside her, his legs spread out in front of him. "I heard about what happened." She could hear his tone deflate just slightly, but she didn't pay too much attention. "I figured you might need someone to talk to."

"I don't want to talk." She was perhaps too curt, so she bit her lip, looking back over at him with downcast eyes. "But I don't want to be alone."

Gilbert nodded his head, and without requesting permission, he draped the blanket that he had tucked against his chest over her shoulders, where it hung loosely. But, just as the breeze was about to knock it off, she gripped it with both hands, and pressed it against herself. It smelled like Gilbert. She wasn't sure why she knew that, but somehow it was so distinct, as if the earthy, vanilla scent, some mixture of cabin and wilderness and oceans, could not possibly be anything else but Gilbert Blythe. She gently quirked her lips upward, and a dimple appeared on the right side of her face.

Gilbert thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

But it was different now, wasn't it? Perhaps he had always been foolish around Anne, perhaps he had always known that he was foolish around her, but this was a new beast all on its own. But he knew that love sacrificed just as much as Anne did, in a different way, but the proverb was engrained in his heart nonetheless. "Anne, do you think we can talk about this someday?"