The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
Scarlett started scolding Rhett the moment he came into the room. "Why couldn't you just agree with her for half an hour? Now you're leaving angry."
"I don't want to be a hypocrite, and I always leave angry."
"Is it hypocritical to be kind?"
"Sometimes!"
"You're such a mean varmint sometimes!"
"Congratulations, you told me what you've really been thinking, and you're not a hypocrite, at least not this minute."
"Well then, you're lily-livered, too."
He stopped and looked at her. "I'm what?"
"You have a yellow stripe clear down the back of your beautifully tailored suit. You're a coward, all right?"
He reached out and grasped her wrist. "How can you say that?"
"Because life's a fact. Sometimes it's good, and a lot of times it's Yankees marching straight through your mother's dining room. But you don't leave every three weeks to get away from it. Most of us don't have the means. We have to dig in and make the best of what is. We have to live the life that's in front of us and try to make something of it."
She wasn't wrong, which meant something dangerous. "What's broken is broken," he said, repeating himself, he knew. When had he said that before?
"Things have to be broken," she said quietly. "The ground has to be broken to grow crops, or to build things like that horrible house in Atlanta. Broken isn't always bad. It's just an irrevocable change. Fabric and timber have to be cut to make clothes and build things, too. And Rhett, please explain to me why there's always an argument the night before you leave? It's always the biggest argument, as though you're trying to justify abandoning us. We haven't really fought this whole visit until tonight."
He sighed while clenching and unclenching his hands. She wasn't wrong, and well to her ability to take her life and change the shape of it when faced with something incontrovertible. He approved and despised her for that skill.
"God help the Yankees."
"What's that?"
"I'm leaving, and you're going back to Atlanta soon, and you will lick everything and everyone that stands in your path," he said. "There's something admirable in that even if I can't admire it properly."
"Oh, Rhett," she said, and he pulled her onto his lap to start unfastening her dress.
When Prissy knocked on the door in the early morning, Rhett got up to take the baby from her. "Thank you, Prissy," he said. He sat on the bed for a few minutes, cradling Gerald against his chest. Gerald snuggled for a moment but quickly made it clear he wanted something different. "Scarlett." Rhett tapped her shoulder.
"Hm?" She saw the baby and sat up. "It's that time already? Why didn't you wake me?"
He chuckled. "I'm waking you now. You were too tired to hear Prissy at the door."
A moment later, Jerry was getting his meal and Rhett was watching, his head tilted. "I've yet to decide if I'm content or jealous to watch you and him like this." He didn't need light to know she was blushing dark red. "You seem to enjoy it."
"It just makes me feel as though everything around me will be right somehow. Thank you for it."
"I'm not sure what you're thanking me for."
"You made the baby possible, didn't you?"
"I did, and I'm still not sure about another one so soon."
"You almost sound like you're expecting it. The doctor said it was almost impossible."
"He didn't know you like I know you. You eat impossible for breakfast with your toast and grits."
Scarlett switched the baby around, and Rhett sat back against the headboard, pulling her to lean against him.
"Are your things all packed?"
"There are one or two things to go into my valise. My big trunk is already at the train station. I'm leaving this for you." He pulled a night shirt out from under his pillow and laid it over the baby. Her free hand moved to touch it and she patted his hand in the process.
"You're really going," she said in a very small voice. "You don't know how I'll miss you."
He reached over to the bedside table for a handkerchief and handed it to her. "But I do know that you can survive anything."
He quietly stepped out of the room just after daylight, dressed for travel. He wouldn't let Scarlett come downstairs. She was exhausted from the talking—and other things—that had happened during the night and the baby was due a feeding at any moment. He told her to sleep in; he could nap on the train.
"Scarlett's not coming down?"
"I wouldn't let her. She's exhausted and I couldn't stand to see her, the devastation on her face. It makes me do things like steal horses just this side of the knacker."
"You work well together."
"It's only because we're not together for more than a week or two. I nearly threw her off the balcony last night."
"What did you do to her instead?"
Rosalyn Butler was the only person alive who could make her son blush, a fact she smugly enjoyed over the rim of her Limoges coffee cup.
Rhett pondered the question as the train pulled out of Charleston. Why did he keep coming back, and why wasn't it enough to simply stay all the time? Aside from the obvious, he reminded himself. Scarlett wasn't terribly likable. She'd managed to unite several warring factions within Atlanta in their universal dislike of her, as a matter of fact. He had to admit that even when he encouraged her to treat those people as she and he felt they deserved, he didn't really like her, either. He did enjoy seeing them get told the honest truth, he had to admit, but it didn't make her likeable.
He did like her, though. She had such fire and flare. She was full of energy to get things done, to build a new world around herself. Now that she knew what she was doing, she brought that energy to the bedroom, too, changing how he saw relations between men and women forever. She wasn't bad to talk things over, either. She showed real acumen in discussing her plans and even when occasionally going over some of his.
At the end of the day, he had to admit he liked being around her and being with her… except when he didn't. She could be impossible and bull-headed, especially where that fantasy romance with Ashley was concerned. That seemed to be truly gone, however, and it wasn't replaced by anything equally diaphanous, unless it was her love for him.
Her love for him was proving harder to shake. He was sure he couldn't want it, but at the same time he knew he was starting to depend upon it. It was the damn night shirt. He'd always wondered in the past why certain ones weren't available, when Pork had given him a straight-faced shake of the head, only for them to show up weeks later while another was missing. Now that he knew what had happened to them, a side of him was caught up in the romance of it, even to the point where he was participating.
Memories of the arguments kept him from getting off the train in Atlanta. They had some horrible arguments, and while at one time he enjoyed them, spiking her guns and watching her go up in flames, now they hurt. He didn't want to hurt her, and still less did he like being hurt when she returned fire with her sharp tongue. The potential for other pain kept him back, too. He couldn't lose another child. He couldn't lose his wife like he'd lost her almost as soon as he'd married her. Scarlett and most people might learn how to deal with their lives after they were broken, but Rhett would not, could not. He would simply be a nomad until life stopped having the potential to hurt him.
This system they'd worked out over the last year, of spending weeks together and then months apart, seemed to be working. They could enjoy the bedroom together and conversations about business and family or town goings on, but as soon as the arguments started, Rhett could leave and they'd each have a pleasanter life without the other for a while until they missed each other again. He chuckled to himself. This might be the perfect marriage after all. Maybe his mother was right.
The mine in California hadn't done much since he'd left it in the fifties. It had stood almost entirely empty, after he'd gotten what was easily obtained as of the time he'd been there. There were other entities now, companies with investors, who bought machines to help look for the next layer of gold and were efficient enough to make it worth the while. These people made him offers. These offers wouldn't make little Gerald rich, but he would be much better off than the other children in Atlanta.
He bought himself a pickaxe and helmet, a lantern and gloves, and all the other accouterments, and spent an afternoon playing around, never going very deep, just seeing if he had any sort of taste for this type of work anymore. He didn't, and he had no desire to bring Gerald—or Wade—to see if they were any good at it. He went back and signed paperwork with one of the companies that seemed to be the best fit for his land, and came away with the promise of a lump sum for ownership of the land, plus a nice yearly income. He would set aside the proceeds of the sale for Gerald. He cabled Rosemary about the income, telling her the dollar amount she could use to make any improvements to the plantation that she felt were necessary in the short term. There might be buildings to raise or equipment to obtain.
Rhett spent some time in San Francisco, staying in the best hotel and eating in the best restaurants while looking for the places he'd frequented in earlier days. When he could find a store or saloon, they'd changed hands several times over and had been made over to accommodate a more genteel population. There was no face he could recognize. San Francisco had undergone the same transformation he had. Something more refined had come along and changed it away from the rough and tumble world it had once been. When the concierge suggested a couple of discreet saloons Rhett might want to go to in order to find companionship, it was time to book passage on a ship. He looked through the offerings for the next couple of days and decided upon one that went to Japan. Then one that went from San Diego to Hawaii caught his attention; the ship would continue to Japan. He could make it if he took the first morning train.
A/N: Thanks to the readers and reviewers, including samandfreddie, gabyhyatt, kanga85, Guest 1 & 2, Romabeachgirl1981, Truckee Gal, Kinderby, and AnnetheQueen83