Since you guys wanted an epilogue, I wrote one. It is kind of late, I know. I apologize. It was so long I had to edit out a big chunk of it. And yet it's still too long, argh! Maybe I should have cut more of the Rhett-wallows-in self-pity part. Oh, and sorry people who were surprised by the depressing ending. I didn't really think you guys would be that surprised (I am a negative, depressing person). And a nice fluffy ending would have been inadequate, considering how depressing the fic is.
And Scarlett's death was planned before I even started writing the beginning, so letting her live would have ruined the whole thing.
How long had it been since Scarlett's death? Rhett couldn't remember anymore. It had happened years ago, incredibly long ago. She had been buried a week before Christmas, he at least knew that, but the specific year… He simply couldn't remember, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to. What he did remember, was her cold and limp body in his arms. Her dimples, her red lips, her green eyes full of life that looked like a cat's, gleaming entrancingly in the dark. He thought about her tiny waist, her little callused hands in his big tanned ones, her terrible temper and selfishness, and her pain. He had knowingly caused her most of the pain. Why? Why did he torture the only woman he had ever loved? For revenge? Or had he simply wanted to get rid of her? He simply didn't know anymore. What he did know, was that she had loved him, he had loved her, and if they only had loved each other at the same time, Scarlett never would have died, and they might even have lived happily together. If Scarlett hadn't died, he wouldn't feel so guilty. Wade wouldn't be an orphan, and he was quite sure Mammy would not have died so early either. Scarlett was right. Even in her death she was selfish to the end.
At least Scarlett was finally happy, wherever she was. Good for her.
Rhett had to admit to himself that he missed her. Ever since she had died, he remembered her better and better, with more and more detail, and she was gradually blotting out all other thoughts. He had once wanted to leave her, never see her again, and slowly forget her. Now he realized this wish was foolish. Forgetting her was impossible. It would most likely take him more than the rest of his life to be finally free from her memory, and he was sure he would never get rid of the guilt. He was so tired. Guilt and regret had gnawed his mind for so many years that he had become used to both of them by now. But though time had made him more accustomed to painful recollections, it had not made his memories any less disagreeable yet.
Maybe, after roughly ten years of thinking about his dead wife almost constantly, he had fallen in love with her all over again. Maybe, after seeing her coffin lowered into the ground with Wade hiccoughing next to him and mammy bawling loudly, after drinking until he was wasted every occasion he had and still not being able to forget her visage, after guilt, regret, sorrow, obsession, and even hatred, Scarlett had managed to bewitch him again. Even though she was no more than a corpse, she had gotten him back in her grasp like she had hoped to, except that it was a little too late to be of any benefice for her. Sometimes Rhett thought that the reason their relationship failed was just bad timing, irony, and horrible luck. Still, he was not sure what he felt for Scarlett was really rekindled love, or just a mixture of regret, drunkenness, and anger at himself that left him with a bizarre obsession.
Nonetheless, he was standing in the Oakland Cemetery, looking at Scarlett's grave, on the umpteenth birthday of her death. The place was completely deserted; people were scared of coming out in such cold weather. He had decided to bury her in Atlanta instead of Tara, for a number of reasons. First of all, Scarlett could be with her daughters. Somehow it made sense for him to bury her with her dead children. But the real reason was that he wanted to be buried with Scarlett too, and if she was buried in Tara… He still didn't know if he had made the right decision.
More had come to her funeral than he had expected. There were Will Benteen, Suellen, and Careen, some families from Scarlett's county that Rhett didn't remember and would never meet again like the Tarletons and the Fontaines, Rhett's own mother, who regretted not being able to know her eldest son's wife better, Dr. Meade and Mrs. Meade who tried to look sorrowful even though they had had contempt for the late Mrs. Butler, M. Meriwether, who ignored his daughter-in-law's disapproval and attended to keep Henry some company, every single man in the Klan that Rhett had saved had come with their wives following them more or less grudgingly, a few of Melanie's old friends had come only for Mrs. Wilkes' sake, and even Beau and Ashley had ignored India's wrath and stood next to the grave weeping quietly. Of course, India did not attend, but Scarlett probably would have been mad if she had come. Rhett, who would have been exceedingly enraged by Ashley's appearance once, didn't care about Ashley at that moment.
Somehow her names had all managed to fit on her tombstone, and there was no Latin. Rhett had made sure of it.
He wondered how Wade was doing. He hadn't seen the boy since years ago, when he had graduated from Harvard. Who knew where he was? Maybe he was married by now. Maybe he didn't even live in America anymore. He wasn't too worried about his step-son, surely Wade was able to take care of himself. He closed his eyes and remembered the little boy, crying for his mother on his lap. "Uncle Rhett, Mother can't be dead! It's impossible! Mother wouldn't die! Mother isn't that kind of person, she was healthy, and she didn't have pneumonia! Why? How could that happen?" "She fell off a horse, Wade." "Why is everyone falling off horses? Why's everyone dead because of horses? I hate horses!" "I don't know why they're all falling down horses. Maybe Scarlett just wants to punish me." "Punish you? What d'you mean?" "Your mother wants to punish me because of the divorce." "The divorce? Are you and Mother still going to…?" "There's no point in a divorce if the wife is dead. Divorces can all go to hell, now. It's because of them she died in the first place. Because of me." Wade had looked at him with shock, obviously not understanding anything of what Uncle Rhett had told him. Rhett took another swig from his bottle of brandy and ignored his questioning gaze.
"Sir?" Asked someone behind Rhett's back, making Rhett snap out of his bitter thoughts. Rhett had not even heard the young man's footsteps, so lost he had been in his memories.
"Good day, Sir." replied Rhett. "Do I know you?"
He gazed more attentively at the man, and strangely there was something familiar about those brown locks and big kind eyes. Something that reminded him of… Of Charles Hamilton.
"Wade." Rhett whispered.
Wade's eyes widened. "UNCLE RHE…! I - I mean Captain Butler. May I ask what you are doing here?" Wade's expression went from total surprise to icy formalness.
"I'm visiting your mother and your sisters." With a last glance at Scarlett's tombstone he took a few steps towards Ella's grave, but he could feel Wade's silent and unexplainable anger behind his back. He would probably have hugged the young man with joy if he hadn't turned cold and angry so quickly. It was the same quiet, Hamiltonian anger that Melanie had felt for everyone who dared to criticize her beloved Scarlett. Why did everyone in the family love Scarlett so? Except India of course, she was the only one with a bit of sense. "And what are you doing here Wade?" He asked casually, as he gazed at the small grave and swiftly remembered Ella's coughing, her wheezing breath, and her slow, quiet death. He sighed. Poor forgotten Ella.
"It's the anniversary of Mother's death. I had to come." Wade said. "But I was wondering, sir, why this is the only time in thirteen years when you ever came back to Atlanta and paid your respects to your loved ones."
"Thirteen?" He repeated softly. How old was Wade now? Twenty-four years old? "Has it really been that long, Wade?"
"Oh yes. It's been that long. You decided to dump me in boarding school and ignore anything that had the slightest bit to do with my Mother. In five years, I only saw you twice. You never replied to my letters. And then when I graduated, you completely disappeared from my life. I actually felt worried about you, not seeing you for such a long time and all, but you are completely fine and I'm guessing that you simply didn't want to waste your precious time on me."
"You didn't want me to waste time on you either." Rhett groaned. He walked towards Bonnie's grave. Lovely, darling Bonnie. Half of him was laying there with her. Rhett kept his voice calm. "How have you been doing these past few years, my boy? Not too bad, I hope. You don't look destitute, so I take it that your job as a lawyer has paid off. Maybe your Aunt Melly had a good idea, despite what your mother thought about the subject. Are you married yet? You sure look old enough to settle down." Rhett lit a cigar. The smoke curled lazily in the shivery air.
"Oh, I'm not married. I'll never get married if I can help it."
"Why is that? Are women too silly and annoying for your liking, or did you simply decide naively to wait for the right girl to cross your path and live happily ever after?"
"I don't want to marry. If I do, my marriage might end like my Mother's did." Wade replied with anger and loathing. Rhett had no idea Wade's voice could be so full of venom. "If I marry, I don't want to destroy the woman I marry or ask her to divorce me, and I want to love her, not hate her. I could never marry a woman without thinking about the pain she might cause me, or I might cause her. Having children isn't worth having my heart broken."
"Don't talk about things you don't understand Wade. I used to love your mother. At the beginning of the marriage, at least. In the end, it… deteriorated. You were only eleven when she died, you couldn't possibly know what was happening."
Something in Wade suddenly snapped. Rage flooded his face and he blushed violently. "So you remember my age when my mother died?!" He shouted, his voice echoing loudly in the empty and peaceful cemetery. "You remember that I was too small to matter to you at the time, but you don't remember how many years ago she died? You did not visit Mother's grave until NOW? You neglect me for more than a decade? You could have written to me, at least!" He stopped and panted. "You KILLED MOTHER! The divorce you wanted so badly made her go crazy! I'm sure of it! Why were you so cruel so shortly after Ella's death? Who would divorce their wife after their daughter just died? If you didn't love her, why marry her in the first place? Just to torture her? To torment her? You broke her, she went crazy because of you, and that's why she ran away to Tara on a horse that day, and that's why she had that terrible accident and…"
"Wade, if you don't shut your mouth immediately I'll most likely shoot you." There was a low, dangerous note in Rhett's voice, yet his face was as blank as usual. "And I'm sure we both don't want that." Wade reluctantly stayed quiet.
"I loved your mother, my boy. She is the one who hated me." Wade was about to protest when Rhett threw him a glare that meant "Don't you dare interrupt me." Wade relapsed into silence.
"After Bonnie died, I no longer loved Scarlett, as you pointed out so rudely. But when Melanie died, your Mother unexplainably fell in love with me, when I admit I had expected her to throw herself at Ashley. I know it doesn't sounds particularly believable, but it is the truth. She thought we could start over and be happy, I didn't. So I went away from Atlanta to flee from her. But Ella became ill, and so I obviously had to come back to this wretched place. I didn't come just to torment her or to argue with her about the divorce. I may have acted dishonorably towards your mother at the end, but she was no angel either, as I'm sure you know already. When Bonnie died, she accused me of killing her, and apparently everything that ever went wrong between us was my fault. Only later did she feel any regret for her words." He chuckled sadly. "And she was right. Everything was my fault. Even her death was my fault, I don't deny it. But Scarlett wanted to die, and in a way she deserved to, I suppose. Judging by your face, I assume that what I just said did not make any kind of sense to you, Wade."
Wade took the opportunity to resume his accusing. "How can you say this? She didn't deserve to die! She did bad things, of course, but she was my mother and we all loved her! You are lying to me because you need a good reason to defend yourself, and you don't actually have any."
"I'd like to know if your fondness for your mother was reciprocal. As far as I can tell, she was never an excellent mother. Or did she develop some of Mrs. Wilkes' maternal instincts during my absence?"
"No, of course not. But she did try hard to be nice to us, and not to snap at us even when Beau, Ella, and me were driving her mad. And she gave Ella piano lessons! You know she had no patience, and yet she taught Ella how to sing when Ella had the worst memory I've ever heard of. Even if she wasn't a perfect mother, she was as good as she could be, and that's why I won't let you insult her like you did."
"I did not insult her."
"You insult her by forgetting her! You insult her by forgetting these graves for thirteen years! You insult her by tarnishing her memory when you are the one who acted like a cad!"
"Who said I was tarnishing her memory? What I said was the truth, even Scarlett would probably admit it. And God knows I didn't forget her. I've never forgotten her from the moment I met her at Twelve Oaks. And I have been thinking of her constantly since her death."
"Why didn't you visit her then? You never came back to Atlanta since her burial! If I could come back to Atlanta all the way from Cambridge every Christmas break just to see her on this very day, you should have done so too! Hell, I still come every year from Montgomery just to be able to see these tombstones. So you have no excuse for…"
"You live in Montgomery? In Alabama?"
"Yes. What did you expect? Did you think I would stay in this city when there are so many painful memories still lingering…"
They both looked at the tombs for a long, quiet moment. There were no sounds in the quickly darkening graveyard except the quiet howling of the wind and their own soft breathing.
Rhett smiled sadly and broke the silence. "You know, Scarlett would probably think we are being incredibly silly arguing about her like we just did." Wade did not reply.
"I wanted to come back, Wade. To be frank, I've been meaning to come back for a long time, but I didn't want… at the same time, I didn't want to. If I didn't see her grave, I might forget her and my guilt. And I sure wanted to forget her. But Scarlett wouldn't let me go, you know how she is. I've tried to forget her for a long time, but I just can't escape her."
"Well I think you're a coward. I can't see why anyone would be afraid of a dead body."
"For goodness' sake, will you stop it? I'm tired of bickering with my step-son about my dead wife. Frankly Wade, I'd rather stay in your good graces. God knows I lost enough loved ones already, and even though I'm nothing but your step-father who neglected you and an old blackguard who killed your mother, I was quite fond of my wife's children. In case you didn't notice, I paid for your studies. It's better than the orphanage."
"But you are the reason my Mother died!"
"Well, if you put it that way, then Ella killed Scarlett too. Bonnie killed Scarlett too. Ashley and Beau killed Scarlett too. We all killed her, even you. Do you think she would ever have committed suicide if she hadn't known your future was assured? If you had refused to go to boarding school and Harvard, she would have stayed alive just for your sake."
Wade stayed silent for a long, quiet moment. Then he whispered "So she did kill herself. I thought she might have, with the train and everything. You never really answered me properly when I asked you about the subject Uncle… Captain Butler, I mean. All you said was that she had fallen off a horse. You never even told me where it happened. I remember I even had to ask Mammy for the location."
"Why are you surprised? It's only the last of a long list of sins she commited during her saintly life. And what was I supposed to tell you? 'Wade, your mother killed herself.'? You were only a kid."
"You could have told me later."
"I didn't see you later. And I was sure you didn't want to see me."
"Who the hell told you that?"
"You didn't seem particularly pleased to see me when I visited you. So I stopped visiting altogether."
"And I was angry at you BECAUSE you didn't visit!"
Rhett laughed. "We misunderstood each other, didn't we Wade? At least it's not too late to make it up. If you still want to make up, that is. Hopefully, you don't despise me quite as much now that we finally cleared a few things up."
"Cleared a few things up? Mother commited suicide because of you." Wade said grudgingly.
Rhett studied Wade's face for a moment. "I do feel guilty Wade." He finally admitted. "I feel terribly guilty about Scarlett, and I actually miss her, believe it or not. I also miss Bonnie, Ella and you. No one in this world knows me or understands me anymore and I'm tired of being constantly surrounded by strangers who know me as either the black sheep in the Butler family and an old Scallywag, or as a wealthy business associate." Rhett wanted to love again. He wanted to be loved, and to have a life with meaning. He would rather shoot himself in the foot than admit it, but he couldn't bear the endless loneliness that had slowly transformed his life into morose boredom. Yet, he couldn't find anyone worthy of his love either. There was only one Scarlett, and even if he was falling in love with her again (which he still doubted), she was dead and he was even more lonely because of it. But maybe Wade, whom he had almost considered like his own son, would finally give him something to live for.
Wade said nothing, though he knew that the young man's anger was now leaving him. He was forgiving Rhett.
Rhett looked once more at the three graves. When he grew old, he definitely wanted to be buried there, with them. He had to remember to tell that to his son.
"Shall we go Wade? Personally I already stood here for quite some time. I would gladly welcome some warmth. Where are you staying?"
"At Aunt Pitty's house."
"How is she? I almost visited her yesterday, but she most likely forgot who I am. If you don't mind I'd like to accompany you."He had called on Belle Watling instead of Pittypat, but Wade didn't need to know that. Belle had caught syphilis, and he was worried about her health.
"I don't think I mind." Wade shrugged. "We have a lot of conversation to catch up on, and I a cemetery does seem like an incongruous place for having a chat. Don't mention Uncle Henry to Aunt Pittypat, though. He died five years ago and the poor old lady is still not over his death. She swoons as soon as anyone mutters his name." Both men started walking towards the gate.
"Everyone's dying apparently. How's Ashley Wilkes, is he dead too?" Rhett asked almost hopefully.
"No. He's not dead. He went bankrupt and lost the mills, but he managed to get a job as a teacher."
"How unfortunate. He is the only person I wouldn't mind seeing dead, but he's just about the only one still alive for some reason. And Beau? How's the boy?"
"Oh, he's great." Wade smiled for the first time. "He wrote a letter to me announcing his upcoming marriage. His fiancée is one of his many pretty cousins in Virginia. Love at first sight, or so he says. Everything has been going fine for Beau since Aunt India moved to Macon with Aunt Honey. The poor woman couldn't stand living in Atlanta anymore. He even went to university, though God knows how Uncle Ashley could afford it. When I asked Beau about it, he said that they received an anonymous letter full of money and that the contents were largely enough for his school fees. I have trouble believing that though. He was probably simply making fun of me." Wade thought that Ashley had somehow saved enough money for Beau's scholarship even though his current salary was quite meager. But then, why did Beau make up some crazy story about an unsigned letter with cash in it?
Rhett looked amused. "Who knows, maybe he's telling the truth. Remember how Ashley received money out of the blue and bought the mills from Scarlett? Maybe the same person sent money for Beau."
"Maybe. But how in the world did the person know Uncle Ashley needed money?" Wade mused. "Well, never mind that. Whoever it is, this person sure is awfully generous."
"Thank you, Wade."
"Pardon me?"
"Nothing." Rhett chuckled softly.
"What happened to the mansion Wade? Did you sell it?"
"Yes, I sold it."
"Good for you. That dreadful place isn't worth keeping."
They were sitting in Miss Pitty's parlor, talking quietly next to a bottle of brandy. Beau had joined them, bringing cheerful talk about his approaching marriage.
"Sometimes I wonder if it was a good choice. I got rid of so many memories when I sold the house… I kept some things though. Like the piano. It is at the Wilkes' now."
"There was plenty of space," Beau chipped in. "Aunt India moved to Macon because I was such an ungrateful child, and I haven't seen her since, good riddance. The house was even more empty after I moved out, and Father talked about living somewhere smaller. But he never did, probably because of my mother's memory."
"It sounds just like him. And what about where you boys live? Do you like Alabama Wade?"
"It isn't too bad. Montgomery is one of these old cities proud of their long historical background. I like it better than staying in Atlanta at least. And how is Charleston?"
"It hasn't changed much. Everyone hates me, even after such a long time. My reputation is forever tarnished by my treachery during the war, as you know. I don't go to Charleston very often anymore." What was the point of going to Charleston after his mother had died? The only reason he still visited from time to time was Rosemary.
"You deserve it." Wade replied. Beau looked at Wade with indignation, but Rhett laughed. "You know you remind me more and more of your mother. It's the kind of thing she would have said."
The three men talked until late into the night, and Rhett felt happy for the first time in years.
When Rhett Butler died thirteen years later, he was buried in Atlanta next to his wife and daughters. He lies there to this day.
Thank you for sticking with this story for so long, guys. Even those of you who hated it, or didn't actually read all of it. I apreciate it. I'll write another "happier" story later when I have time, since I promised Missysammy, though I regret it already. I don't exactly know when I'll start writing it. Aproximatively somewhere between tomorrow and the next five years, I'm guessing. But I do know that it's going to be a what-if, and that Scarlett will be more in character than in this fic.
Again, thank you everyone! (I finally finished a fic, for real. Wow. Am I supposed to feel incredibly proud of myself?? Or just very tired? Or relieved?)
