AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here's a Kalijah/Gone with the Wind fusion for you. Inspired by both a gifset I saw floating around on Tumblr, and some pretty persuasion from a few friends. (Civil War AU + War-Torn South + Dancing + Feisty Conversation)

Enjoy!*fingers crossed y'all don't hate it*

xx Ashlee Bree

"I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost."—Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

The assembly hall smelled of sweat and intoxication, of gossip tinged with malice just at the edge of blood. War holes had grown too big or bleak over the last few months of 1863 for southerners to mend them all with cotton bonds or fundraisers. Hunger, fear, desperation, and desertion continued to swell amid their ranks despite that ever-present Confederate pride. It mattered not how loud men, boys, and soldiers had bellowed or bragged about "lickin' them Yankees inside of a month" before the fighting began, either, because it hadn't happened. It wasn't a practical expectation. It never should have been.

Arrogant words had proven to be powerful in theory, helping to build credence and morale, but futile in practice because they were not enough to facilitate preparation, to provide adequate ammunition or supplies. Words had fallen short, or so they say. They weren't enough.

A war with the Union, as it'd turned out, was not so easily won.

In fact, the truth was that a wound was widening throughout the south these days which threatened gangrene surrender, death to their way of life, and there was no cleansing it. There was no way to salvage or preserve the hide of what once was. Change stuck to the skin of society like dust - stirring and stewing until the time came for much of what the south prized to be swallowed up completely; for it to be buried beneath volumes of American cotton-tilling history where it'd suffocate, where it'd be dirtied by the horrors of slavery which had been condoned and practiced for centuries - and that dust was coming in fast. Hard. Thick.

Tiny granules of it flicked off the wind each passing day to clog lungs, to prick eyes. The lives of sons, brothers, husbands, and old friends were splattered across battlefields in gaping reds or blacks because that was the grimness of conflict. Those were the spoils of a civil war.

Blood, death, catastrophe - it was everywhere anyone looked, and Elijah was thankful for a reprieve tonight. Contented to be blind to it all for a time.

Deafened to muskets firing, to the cannon fodder in the distant wilderness outside, he heard only rapture and delight wherever he tread at the moment. He welcomed nothing except gaiety. Wanted only fine company, conversation, and wine. Resolved to attend to whims he'd forgotten, or had been repressing for far too long.

Losing himself to the music of the moment, therefore, he hung onto each song as if it were his last; and, she - this woman in his arms - the only note left on earth he cared to eulogize.

"You are exasperation, Miss Petrova. You are breathtaking torment and exasperation," Elijah breathed against her earlobe this sweltering July evening."

"Says the man who persists in addressing me by my maiden name," she said, goading him, her voice honeyed despite the crescent moons her fingernails were digging into his knuckles at present. "And in public, no less."

"I thought you'd care to pretend as if you were the belle of the county again," he said.

"I would not."

"I see." He paused a moment before trying a different tack. "Not even if there were dozens of beaus lined up to pay you their addresses?"

"No."

Katerina's response was firm. Rote. Still, a small smirk slipped free at the last moment to which Elijah shook his head, seemingly unsurprised. "You are as unscrupulous as ever," he said in a low tone and sighed.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Come, you do not truly mind the idea of having wagons of beaus at your disposal outside Moonstone Plantation once more." Miss Petrova stiffened, her nails scratching deeper into his hand almost in warning. A feline-like glean in her expression. "You'd rather like it, I suspect," Elijah added drily, knowingly.

"Perhaps I would." Her lips curled upward and fashioned into a tight little bow. "Or perhaps I would not," she said.

Elijah's forehead pinched as he lifted her chin with his index finger and their gazes met: tense, heady, and unblinking.

"Which one is it, Katerina? Yes or no?"

Considering him, she strummed her fingers softly atop his gray uniformed shoulder as if he were a fiddle, as if he were an instrument to be played in trifles whenever she so desired, but they both knew he wasn't. Not this time. He'd known her too long, too well.

Her heart still longed for someone else, another man, but Stefan Salvatore was a weak and idealistic country fool from Virginia whom she'd never be able to understand. And, as a consequence of her oblivious nature, Elijah had endeavored to enlighten her mind and heart.

He'd resolved to crack open her city soul with all the style and class she could stuff beneath her silk petticoats, for he understood full well that only a worldly gentleman of his forbearance could balance out her caprice. If only Katerina would stomp through the dust of her obstinacy with open eyes—and see it.

"I'd hoped you'd grown up by now," he remarked with brusque but growing intensity. "Or perhaps you've learned to be contented by fleeting attentions from the wrong sort, from your spineless Stefan Salvatore?"

"Oh, what a question, Captain Mikaelson. What a question…"

"Do you know what," she said coyly, her eyes sparking from amber to coal in a moment, "I think I—why, yes, I think I'd prefer to keep you ensnared in suspense. Would you like that for yourself, do you reckon? To be ensnared by a woman of my substantial…" she bit the corner of her mouth, "charms and panache?"

Elijah appraised her carefully. Katerina simpered flirtatiously as their knees bumped together, their bodies tethered, swaying in tandem to the crescendo of music around them.

"Perhaps I already am, my dear," he said un-ironically. "And how pointless, how truly pointless, it'd be for you to try to re-ensnare a caught man."

Captain Mikaelson delighted over her slight tremble at his words, that sharp intake of breath. A mixture of flattery and gall would always liven her up, and they both knew it. They both felt it crackle in the air between them like a whip.

"In any case, I've always known you were more of a lark than a lady," he said. It was spoken as placidly as a forehead kiss.

"It is indecent of you to say such things to me. Offensive, rather," Katerina added haughtily, twirling to the left with a hiss. "You are no gentleman, Elijah Mikaelson."

"I'm afraid you are mistaken in that regard, my dear," he said with a wry sigh.

Why, he mused, why was he so brutally stoic toward the ones he adored?

"For all but a true gentleman would hold that quality against you - reviling you for it, condemning your strength of spirit. Whereas I…frankly, do not. And never shall."

"Is that so?" she laughed disparagingly. Then her gaze narrowed because his head tilted almost fondly when he reeled her back against his hip with grace. His curt smile spread into a tight line.

"Yes."

With one palm flat, firm, against the small of her back and his opposite hand thumbing a line down her cheek now, Elijah's eyes were browner than burnt sienna as he caged her in his arms then waltzed them across the checkerboard tile in elegant, flowing steps. A graveyard of impossible love slid beneath their heeled feet with every turn, with every provocative dip of her head. Their lithe movements contrasting with the stiff ache he bore beneath his brass-buttoned coat where she never once thought to look, where she'd never be able to expose it to this furloughed crowd full of old beaus.

Where he led, Katerina followed in graceful motions that radiated with challenge. Fire.

Her brunette locks whirled, whistling in concentric circles before falling back against her neck with a soft whap.

Her mouth was accentuated by pert dimples and porcelain teeth. Her hand on his shoulder marked him as territory. A possession to flaunt. Those long gloved fingers of hers scratched and plucked, scraping along his bones for threads of feeling, soothing him into disquiet and magnetism with softly drawn lines at the same time.

Convention burst further into obscurity with each breath of her heaving bosom, with the sharp yet sumptuous tigress eyes she used to slice any and all censure they encountered into shreds.

Elijah focused his mind so he could feel nothing except the purr of her heartbeat as it climbed and climbed. The Atlanta climate was no match for either the sting of her laugh against his ribs, or the rocking heat of her hip against his thigh.

Everything began to evaporate around them until it was just them. Together. His hand on her waist, her breath on his neck.

They were like two ghosts floating in a packed ballroom. And, yet, the sound of indignant gasps still rattled louder and louder behind them because of another jubilant swoosh of her mourning gown. It grazed the floor as they moved, propriety little more than a moot point now. Forgotten amid the swirl of her hooped-skirts and exultant sighs.

Not that Katerina cared, in any case, or seemed to heed it with anything except an upward tilt of her nose, with a flared sword drawn across her mouth.

"You need not fret over my reputation, Elijah," she said.

"But as a gentleman, I must," he countered. "And I do."

"Don't make me laugh. The last of it was destroyed the moment you took my hand for this dance," she half-spat, her lashes fluttering at him with the sharpness of a bat's wing. "Which you solicited after offering a pouch of gold to the War Fund, I might add."

He arched a brow.

"Says the widow who accepted my dance request, if I'm not mistaken?"

Katerina slanted her head at this, her pouty red mouth curling into something of a hard smile because it was obvious he knew she'd longed for a reel tonight. "Yes," she said, "but Stefan would—if Stefan were here he'd…"

"Except he's not." The words 'he's betrothed to Miss Gilbert and in Virginia now' dangled between them; understood, naturally, but never acknowledged out loud. "What a shame."

"Still—" she said through clenched teeth, "I know he'd want me to support the Cause in memory of his brother and my…" her nose crinkled like something stank, "in honor of my late…" She bit back a scowl. "In honor of my, dear dear husband," she forced out at last.

Contemplating this, Elijah drew back a little to study her healthy glow beneath the candlelight.

"Interesting, then, that I detect no rings of grief under your eyes," he said.

"And? Your point?"

He shrugged.

"Merely an observation."

Leaning forward, her breath was hot against his ear, "What is it you want from me tonight, Captain Mikaelson?" Katerina whispered acidly.

"Only the truth," Elijah replied in kind.

"Great balls of fire!"

Pivoting hard to the right to keep in step, Katerina rolled her eyes and huffed, "Why do you care so much, sir? Who says a widow must cry over her dead spouse all the time?"

"Do you know what I believe?" he said.

"No," she deadpanned. "Astonish me."

"I believe your lamentations over Damon are hollow." The corner of his lip quirked; it threw some flecks of gold into his dark eyes. "And I think your regard for him was as dry as that handkerchief you have tucked up your sleeve."

Katerina laughed. It was a short, prickly, purring kind of sound.

"So what if it was? We both know my forte is deceit."

"True," Elijah said as they spun through a throng of couples, his lips pursed near her widow's peak, "just as discernment, restraint, and romance are mine."

Another laugh. A snicker this time.

"Oh yeah? Since when?"

"Do not trifle with me, madam," he said, frowning.

"Why ever not? I cannot be tamed, Elijah. And as you said so eloquently earlier, yourself, 'it would be pointless of you to try,' " Katerina quoted wickedly.

"That may be so…"

When she bent backwards at the waist here, dipping her neck toward the floor, Elijah's fingers traced along the inky lace of her corseted spine to hold her in place. Then, in a slow lift, he angled her back toward his chest until his mouth hovered close enough to lick the sheen from her collarbone, to bite the poisonous apple from her throat. The peachy scent of her skin was so delectable, and so fresh, it intoxicated his nostrils with every breath.

"Is there a 'but' here? I thought I sensed an ellipsis," she supplied with tart boredom.

"Yes," Elijah said prudently, "for I've caught you in-between husbands for once, my darling Katerina."

"And?"

He smiled. "And that means you shan't slip by without me giving chase for the rest of your life."

Both suspicious and startled by his meaning, Katerina scowled, her hand stiffening against his bicep as she said, "Another marriage? To you? Oh, great balls of—"

Pressing a finger to her parted lips here, Elijah silenced her by leaning scandalously close before he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

"Take care now," he said as he scorched a promise into her Hadean eyes, "for the dust is about to settle between us once and for all, my dear. Your reputation may be a lost cause, of course, but I will fight all good society to improve it so long as your heart fails to run free from me again. I won't let it go this time."

I had a heck of a time getting a handle on this AU - and am still not convinced I succeeded for various reasons lol - but I couldn't bear to blink at it in frustration any longer. So, alas, I hit POST.

Since Elijah and Rhett Butler are markedly different in personality, I took quite a few liberties in characterization and can only hope they panned out? Maybe? Maybe not? Comments are lovely.

And, as always, thank you so much for reading. xx