Author's Note: I'm warning you ahead of time. This is a continuation of the Bonnie's death stuff. So you might want a hankie. Sorry that this was so long in coming. I hope to be getting back into the swing of things. I'm getting ready to pull out Gura and see if I can update it this weekend as well. Thanks again to all of my readers and all of friends here in the GWTW fanfic community.

The sun had already set by the time that he rose up from the side of her grave. His knees protesting and creaking in agony from remaining in such an unnatural position for such a long time. He was terrified to leave her. Terrified because once he left the grave that it was all over. There was use pretending that she was still with him. And he felt guilty because he was leaving her in the dark. He was leaving her alone and she would have been terrified if she could have still been fearful.

He wanted to believe in something beyond the here and now. He wanted to believe in heaven. He wanted to believe that his Bonnie was happy and in a bright place. Did life really end at death? It seemed so pointless to live such a short life and not have anything else to look forward to.

But if there was a heaven, it still didn't mean that he would ever see Bonnie again. He had lived a life of vice and sin. He could never attain heaven, not in million years could he pay for his crimes enough to find forgiveness. At least Scarlett wouldn't either, her sins were as many as his. But perhaps Bonnie was in heaven playing with her brother or sister that had never been born. He hoped that she was safe and happy. And he hoped that she wasn't angry with him.

But selfishly a part of him hoped that she wasn't happy, that she could never be happy away from him. How could he love his child so much and not hope for her to be happy? But if he was truthful with himself, he missed her so much that even now it felt like his heart was going to shatter from the pain. Bonnie had been his world. What would his life be like without her?

He couldn't imagine it. He knew that he could not go back to life as it had been. He barely remembered that life from before Bonnie came and made his life bright and shining. He couldn't live like she had never been born. She had changed him. Loving her had made him a different person. And missing her was changing him into someone that he didn't recognize.

He needed a drink, and needed it badly. He needed a drink more than he had ever needed a drink in his life. Rarely had drink been his master. He had been in control. He was always in control. And in the instant that her light had burned away, he had lost all semblance of control and power. She was his Achilles heel. He needed that dulling liquor to make him forget, give him a moment of peace from this torment and agony. He couldn't deal with the knowledge that he was to blame for her death. He wasn't ready, and he didn't know that he ever would be ready.

But where could he go? He couldn't go home. He couldn't follow Scarlett and sit across the table from her as she and her children lived when his was gone. He couldn't face Wade and Ella, couldn't deal with the guilt of taking their little sister from them. And He couldn't face Scarlett knowing that Bonnie would have one day looked much the same. And yet he had no friends. There was no one that he could go to mourn and to grieve. The only place that seemed even a remote possibility was to go to Belle's. And that was disgraceful. All of Atlanta would watch him and say that he was disgracing Bonnie's memory. They would accuse him of dishonoring her, but what did a reputation matter anymore? It wasn't as if Bonnie needed it to be accepted. Bonnie was gone. She was gone.

There was none of the usual confidence in his carriage or grace in his stride as he slowly shuffled away from the small mound of dirt that cloaked the coffin that hid his darling from him. Her death had broken him. Like the defeat of the Confederacy had broken his father, so her death had ruined him. He was nothing more now than an empty shell of the man he had once been. There was no humor or light in his eyes. It had been snuffed out along with hers. His Bonnie wouldn't even know him.

His steps were slow, and he dragged his feet as he walked down Peachtree street towards the section of downtown where Belle's establishment was, since there was no where else to go. He needed someone to tell him that he wasn't to blame that would help him drown his sorrows. He needed someone to counter the angry words that Scarlett had hurled at him through that locked door. He couldn't go home. He didn't know how he could ever go back there knowing that Bonnie was gone. How could be face it that house so full of memories of Bonnie and Scarlett? How could he face Scarlett, with her face so like his child's. How could he look at her and not see their child who was gone?

As he finally shuffled into the bar room, he could feel the eyes of all of the patrons of the establishment fixed upon him. They were all sitting there enjoying the company of women that were not theirs. And yet even in a place where they should be shamed, they were still gawking at him. He could feel their morbid curiosity and their sympathy. Damn it! He didn't want their sympathy. He didn't want anything from anyone. No one could give him what it was that he needed.

Belle however seemed to be able to read the emotions that briefly flickered across his face and ushered him into a private parlor away from watching eyes. "How, ya doing sugar?" Belle asked sympathetically as she shut the door behind him.

He looked up at her, looked into her eyes, and she shuddered at the intensity of the pain that was reflected in the unmasked dark depths. "I need a drink." He replied simply.

Belle paused for a moment, almost afraid to leave him. She had never seen him like this, not even in the last several days since Bonnie's death. She supposed that the reality was finally setting in, and the shock was falling away to more intense emotions. He looked like the world had shattered, and he was merely a ghost walking among the living.

"I need a drink, Belle." His voice cracked as he repeated himself.

"You look like you need it pretty badly." She countered.

"Please Belle, please." He replied as tears spilled from his eyes.

How odd it was to see Rhett cry. He was not a man given to emotional outbursts and tears. She couldn't leave him alone, not like this and so she grabbed a hidden bottle of bourbon from a cabinet where she kept her personal supply so that it was always ready at hand. She set it on the table, and moved to get a glass, but before she returned he had already uncapped it and was swallowing it like a man in the desert dieing of thrist.

"Slow down, Rhett. You're going to make yourself sick." She cautioned, eying the already half empty bottle.

"What does it matter, Belle." He gulped another mouthful of the amber liquid with a shudder. "No one cares if I die. Everyone would think that I finally had gotten what I deserved. I can burn in Hell for eternity for all anyone here in the whole South cares." He said flatly as he set the now nearly empty bottle on the table with a clink.

"Ahh, sugar. I care. You know I do." She said petting his hair as he rested it on the table in front of him.

"But she doesn't care." He murmured softly.

"Who doesn't care?" Belle quizzed.

"Scarlett. Scarlett wants me dead. I killed two of her children, and nearly killed her. She would rather that I was dead." He slurred. The alcohol had already begun its work.

"Sugar, have you eaten anything. You shouldn't drink like this on an empty stomach." Belle moved towards the door to summon one of the girls.

But he shuddered, "I can't eat. Don't bother."

"Anyway, what does it matter what she thinks? She doesn't deserve you." Belle said in a smooth voice, trying to appeal to him.

At this his head jerked up, his eyes blazing with anger. "She doesn't deserve what I've put her through!"

"She treats you horribly. You wouldn't be her with me, if she didn't sugar." Belle tried to place a consoling hand on his shoulder, and he jerked away from her.

"If you were a man I would have killed you for saying that." He yelled. "Don't you know what I've done? How can you say that?"

"She accused you of murdering your own child. You told me so yourself. She turned you from her bed, and you think it was because of Ashley Wilkes." Belle countered confused that he was angry with her. She had done nothing other than befriend him and listen to his tale of woe.

"I did murder Bonnie. It's my fault she died. I can't blame Scarlett for accusing me of the truth, now can I." his voice was brimming with anger and resignation. "I could have refused to allow her to turn me away. I could have done things differently."

"I'm only repeating what you have told me. I thought you need a friend to confide in, to tell you that you aren't to blame." She replied churlishly.

He picked up the bottle and finished the contents and then took another from Belle and did the same. "But I am to blame. I knew better. I knew that that damned pony's legs were too short for a higher jump. I had told her no. But then she went ahead and I laughed it off saying that if she fell off she shouldn't cry to me. Scarlett was furious with me. She didn't want Bonnie jumping. It terrified her. She wanted to wrap the children in cotton and never let go." He paused to take another swig off of the bottle. "If I had listened to her for once Bonnie wouldn't be dead"

"Then go home, your precious wife." Belle sneered. "Go back and face her like a man instead of a coward. I'll get a driver to take you. You are in no fit condition to make it on your own. You'd probably end up lying dead in the street."

Tears began coursing down his face once more. "How can I sleep in that house, in my bed with Bonnie's bed empty beside me? How am I supposed to do this Belle?" He cried. "I need another drink." He added as he tossed the now empty bottle to the side.

"You'll kill yourself if you drink like this. You know better, Rhett."

"To hell with you!" He roared as he pushed himself from the table and staggered to the door. "I'll drink until I can't remember my name. I'll drink until I'm dead. I'd be better off dead. I'd be better off where I can't remember what I've done to my baby."

"Get out of here!" Belle screeched as she followed him out the back door. "I'm no help to you. I don't know that anyone can help you. I think that you are too far gone." She then sobered, "I'm sorry that Bonnie is gone. I' m so sorry for you, but that doesn't give you the right to be an ass. And thats what you are being. I won't listen to it. I won't let you treat me like that. I've been your friend for years, and I don't take kindly to the things you are saying."

"I'm sorry, Belle." He whispered. "I'm sorry." He whispered again as he slumped against the seat of the carriage with his hands shielding his face from the world. "She's gone. She's really gone." He cried, as the carriage pulled away from the bright, noisy whore house and drove towards the looming dark, shuttered mansion on Peachtree street where no sound would pierce the night.