₁.₀ SUPERCUT; gilbert blythe ✔

050.

If there is one thing Marilla Cuthbert is good at, it's knocking sense into people.

It's the last day before the exams, and Marianne should be studying. She should be frantically turning the pages in her textbooks and biting on her nails. However, with the school burnt - something that she still cannot think of without being utterly surprised that someone should go to such lengths to stop the publication of the newspaper - she made the decision to take her chances and ask Marilla for a permission to stay home. She said that she wouldn't be able to concentrate at Miss Stacy's house, that Green Gables would surely prove to be a better learning environment.

It's partly a lie, but a lie still. She's worried sick about the exams, of course she is, and yet her main reason for reluctance to leave was something else entirely. And it bore - still does - her name.

Her heart is full of both sorrow and anger as she sits at the kitchen table, head in her hands and books untouched in front of her. It kills her to know that she's already squandered one chance regarding her future, and although she is risking doing just the same about the academic aspect of it, Marianne really cannot force herself to focus on reading lines or memorising historical dates. It's such an absurdity, truly. She has no one to blame but herself, and the logical course of action would be do finally do something about it or accept the situation and admit her defeat, move on. And she does neither, once again able only to dwell on her mistakes.

What a stupid girl she is. And to drown herself in self-pity? Pathetic, if not more.

She barely takes notice of Marilla's return. It's still early, too, and she didn't expect the woman to be back so soon. Any other day, she would ask how her day was, if Delphine gave her no trouble; today, Marianne doesn't really care that much, however selfish does it make her sound.

Marilla sets her basket down on the table. Marianne doesn't need to rise her eyes to know that she's being looked at disapprovingly. "Shouldn't you be doing your revisions?" asks the woman, but no answer comes besides an incoherent mumble. "Are you unwell?"

"No." Not in the sense Marilla means, at least.

"Well, Gilbert certainly didn't look that well either, if you ask me..."

"I, uh... You saw him?"

"Why, of course. The study session at Miss Stacy's house had ended, or so I assumed, and he came back home. And I was not needed there anymore, now that Bash's mother is in Avonlea to help with the baby."

"I see."

The wood makes a creaking sound when Marilla moves to sit down. She takes the spot in front of the girl, and, involuntarily, Marianne ends up meeting her eyes. It's obvious that the woman is uncomfortable, some kind of hesitancy written all over her features... It's as though Marilla is fighting with herself, trying to decide whether to speak or to remain silent.

Little does Marianne know, the woman has prepared what to say on her way back to Green Gables.

"When I was a girl... of your age," begins Marilla now. She struggles to find the right words, even though she really did her best to figure it all out before seeing Marianne. "You see, I am not... a stranger to... to a certain kind of feelings. That look on that boy's face today, I had... I had seen it before. On his father's."

Well, that is what truly gets Marianne's attention. She cannot help the curiosity in her eyes as her brows furrow, questioning gaze set on the woman before her.

"John was... a traveler, at heart. Even as a young man, he already wished to see foreign lands, strange countries and big cities and I... I couldn't even imagine all of it. It seemed impossible." The sound escaping Marilla's lips resembles a chuckle. There's some strange emotion on her face that Marianne has never seen before. "It was his wish that I go with him. And yet there was nothing he could have said to convince me to leave Avonlea... In the end, I was unable to make that... that one decision. And John left, to follow his dreams... You see, Marianne, I was convinced that I have an... an obligation to remain here. I told myself that I cannot leave Green Gables, that there would be no-one to take care of certain matters, I told John that as well. I was able... to tell he did not believe me, but there was only so long he could try and talk me into it."