Author's note: This chapter has taken me a while to write, and in the process has undergone many changes. The first two versions included moments of Scarlett's time as well as Rhett's but then eventually I had to pull out all of the Scarlett observations and allow Rhett the time to say what he needed. So yes this is at least the third version of this chapter. I think this piece is officially over being a one shot, as I already have several more chapters swirling around. But again, it might take time, because I won't post them until I know in my gut that they are what they are supposed to be. Thanks for all of the review! I appreciate everyone of them. Special thanks to Desiree and Corrin!
The mist churned and swirled around him, completely obscuring the world from his sight with its elusive, vaporous tentacles. Within this cloudy haze, the world no longer existed outside of himself. He was trapped inside his mind with nothing but the haunting memories of the tragedies of his own making. Images of the past two and a half years flashed before his eyes : images of watching Melanie's funeral from the shelter of a tree unable to face standing amidst the other mourners, of Scarlett tumbling down the stairs while he watched unable to save her or their child, and worst of all the images of Bonnie's death and all the heartbreak that followed. He himself felt as he were falling, falling precipitously and there was no end in sight. There was nothing to hold on to, there was nothing solid or corporeal. It was cold - terrifyingly cold – mind-numbingly cold. A cold that seeped through his clothes and penetrated into his bones. And it was dark, so dark that it felt like he was the lone survivor of this life, trapped in a darkness, blacker than the blackest night. It was darker then the darkest night at sea when he had been running the blockades during the war. This was a different kind of darkness. This darkness had no thrill, no promise of anything other than more heartbreak and ruin. This darkness could suffocate and paralyze him – it already had been strangling him with its ever-tightening hold. This darkness was something that he could not extinguish or escape. There was no way out.
He needed light; he needed warmth. He needed something, anything - a lifeline to pull him from this ever-widening abyss. There had to be something left, some reason for him to still be alive. There must be a reason that he had not ended his life by his own hand, even as the darkness of grief and guilt consumed him. There had to be more – more than this hell of death and destruction and grief and self-blame.
But there was more.
In the darkness that faint glowing ember in his heart expanded, sharing its glow and heat with him. It shimmered at him extending its radiance, offering hope and life. It would sustain him, for the moment, at least. It was more than it had been, each day it seemed to glow a little more brightly, allowing his heart to feel a little more. This warmth, this faint luminescence would guide him through the dark maze that he had to traverse to find his heart whole and intact once more. This was the first shard of his heart to be recovered. Life may come again.
And he thought of her: his wife, his tormentor, his heart's desire, his greatest foe, and he remembered the soft sounds as she tried to hide her tears from him, as she tried to be strong and let him go. She was soft in his arms, her warm breath caressing his skin. And for a moment he allowed himself to dwell on the feeling of holding her in his arms, the memory of the one night that he had held her, knowing that she loved him. There was so much about her that he missed - that he would always miss without her presence in his life.
But there were parts of her that he had never taken the time to discover or analyze. And now that he had the time to, he did. He understood that it would reveal more faults of his own, but it was still less painful than the hell he was writhing in. He had never really understood how sharply the time after the war had marked her. In the span of time from when he had left her on the road to Rough and Ready to the time when she visited his jail cell, she had changed in ways that he had not even begun to see, much less acknowledge. He hadn't seen the desperation for all that it was, nor the depth or severity of it. He hadn't known how deeply the wounds had penetrated into her heart and her soul. The walls she built had become her only refuge.
When she arrived at the jail in a dress made of her mother's curtains, she was no longer the spoiled belle that lived only to be adored and petted by a crowd of beaus at her beckon call. Gone were the days of an ignorant child gliding through a life filled with pampering and parties. Those times were no more; they had disappeared forever with the curling smoke that had hung over the distant fields of Pennsylvania and with the twilight of that April day in Virginia when the Confederacy had officially died. There was a tangible fear engulfing her, and a predatory hunger in her eyes, that had been visible once he had looked past her charming words and flirtations. She was grasping and desperate and more terrified than he had been in the entire span of his life.
Nothing in his life up to that point had given him a gauge with which he could even begin to comprehend her anguish. She had been bred and raised to be taken care, born into a life of abundance and security, which had been swept away with the storm of war, causing the ashes of the South to churn through the sky. Those days, that desperation and terror, had hardened her from the naive, vain child she had been into a cold granite monument enshrining her as a memorial to those who had survived those dark days, a testament of her endurance and her strength despite the adversity that she was staggering under. She had held that impenetrable barrier around her heart, not allowing any thing inside its protective covering. And now for the first time, he had life experiences that made it possible for him to finally empathize with her plight in those desperate times.
Time had not been able to wash away the wounds that poverty, hunger, and fear had inflicted upon her soul. They were etched into the very essence of who she had become. A part of her was still trying to survive and escape from the nightmare that she had been unwillingly thrust into. She still hadn't escaped from that nightmare, even as she hid behind her possessions and wealth with which he had showered her. In his mind he could hear her crying in the night; in his ignorance he had assumed that by providing her with material possessions that he could erase the damage that had been done. He saw now as he tried to pull away from the stifling darkness, that he had never even begun to tap into the hurts and insecurities that plagued her. He had never even thought to try. And now he was left trying to pull himself out of the same state of hopelessness and desolation.
He had never understood her fixation with Ashley Wilkes, but in truth perhaps she never really had either. She had never been one who was prone to analyze her motivations or thoughts or actions. And by the end of the War, it had become the only thing left from her former days that she had been able to save – the last vestige of life before the war had touched her. She had furtively clung to it as an escape from the barren wasteland that had become her existence. It had remained as her only glimmer of beauty and hope, which is what he was now searching for. He knew that she didn't even really see Ashley as he was now. She couldn't see past the ivory carved image of a Grecian God that dazzled her eyes in the sun-dappled light filtering through the trees of her memory of days gone by to the broken man who had returned from the battlefield as worn and tarnished as a bronze statue of antiquity, as an empty hull of a shipwrecked vessel.
He understood her fascination now.
And now that he understood, the glowing ember began to ignite and kindle itself into a small, flickering flame. Given time, that flame would grow and burn through the pain and rubble, giving him a second chance at life and at love.
He stood on a stone balcony, staring out at the the brackish water that the Venetian lido trapped in the lagoon. He had heard stories of this city at its peak of culture and vitality, but all that had changed nearly a century before when Venice had lost its sovereignty. This city was like him. It had once been a place of life and promise, flourishing and drawing life and passion to it. Yet wars and time had stolen its beauty, leaving it in a state of erosion and disrepair. The buildings were crumbling, some of them beginning to tilt to one side or the other as if welcoming the stagnant water as its tomb, ready to embrace its murky depths as a lover. It was a city suspended above the sea on timbers that had been its support for hundreds of years, but how long could the poles continue to hold it up? Even as he made his way across the water at the time of his arrival, he had noted that some of the timbers directing the nautical traffic were rotting away- as some poles now only held a few feet of their former companions in line. It was suspended as he was between life and death, between the present and the past. Did he have it inside him to continue on? But he already knew that he did.
Life was slowly seeping back into the city, sliding over the putrescent waters and under the numerous bridges. And life was seeping back into him as well.
Hidden away from the world, Venice hid priceless treasures within its historic buildings. But more than that, Rhett was able to witness as the people of the city emerged from the chrysalis of poverty and destruction and began to rebuild. As excursionists began flocking to the lido, soon they would rediscover this amazing city of canals and Carnivale. And the full life and vitality of Venice would be reborn. There was hope for him as well.
And as he stood staring out into the dark morning sky, a faint glow appeared on the horizon. He watched as the sun began to rise in the East, casting pale pink rays onto to the silent waters, painting them gently with its delicate kiss, masking the ugliness and the stench of reality. The light danced through the misty haze that hung just above the waters surface, sending light splintering into a thousand refracted rays – a faint hint of a rainbow shimmering over the canals. In that instant, the beauty of the scene before him breathed new life into his heart and fresh breath into his lungs. There was more to this life than toil and hardship. Life in itself had its own unique beauty. And with that beauty and that realization came a gentle wind that blew through the wreckage of his life, causing the ashes to swirl up to dissipate into oblivion.
His heart was still not whole. His wounds had not all healed, but her love and his love for her was like a salve that was beginning to heal the infection that had been festering since the day that Bonnie had died, that had been emerging even from the time that Scarlett had first turned him from her bed. This was a new beginning as he recognized that love doesn't wear out. It only hides when buried amidst the ashes as his had done. There was a new hope for life kindled in his soul, readying himself to find his way back to her.