We are returning closer to the beginning. Some of you already realized - Rhett is indeed Wade's father, only in this story Charles is a totally different person. Thanks for all the feedbacks. They really help me put this story to form.
9 years before
Captain Rhett Butler hated the eastern wind that would raise clouds of sand on this God forsaken land. He was grumpy and impatient when he was sent for a four days drive to bring in the two red cross paramedics that were assigned to them. They came for only three months.
The wind and sand made it almost impossible to see who entered the armored vehicle.
"Put your head on my lap sweetie" he heard one of them offer softly.
"I will if you promise to avoid fondling me, Melly" he heard the other one answer in an irritated whisper.
"I never"
"Yes, you have!"
"Oh, alright, I promise." He heard the laughter in the voice of the one called Melly "You do know I'm over it."
"I suppose making you come with me to Wade's birth did the trick." The other one laughed.
Both had the southern accents, something familiar. He noticed that his back felt at more ease when he heard a sound that brought home to his senses.
He wondered if the paramedic called Melly was a lesbian, but he was sure that he read one was widowed and one married. K.S Hamilton and M. Wilkes. The names rang a bell, but he couldn't quite locate it.
It was dark when they arrived at the base, but when he helped the smaller one who had fallen asleep on her friend's lap climb down, he noticed that after she saw his face she froze and mumbled - "This can't be, crap. Where's Melly?"
He rushed her to the bunker where they'd stay till the following day. She was shaking but he attributed it to the storm. As she entered to the fluorescent lit room she let her hair loose from the cap. Cascades of black hair came flowing around her face and she put her head down for a minute allowing herself to compose herself. She squared her shoulders and looked up -
"Who would have thought we'd meet again, and here of all places?" she offered her hand for a cool handshake.
It was his turn to freeze. The siren of his dreams. The girl he'd met more than three year before who had vanished when he came looking for her three months after that one encounter.
Instead of shaking her hand his hand flew to wipe down the cold sweat from his forehead. She dropped her hand. Both looked each other in the eye silently when the other woman came rushing in -
"Sis, I got us some blankets- oh- I think I've met you-" she looked at the Captain and looked at her sister-in-law.
Scarlett excused herself and tried to find the restroom.
He woke from his thoughts as he offered the other woman a hand - "Yes, I believe we have. Twice."
Three years before
Three months after there was another affair in the county. Frank and Andrew arrived without Rhett.
She asked Andrew where he was.
"There is some affair with his boy, I think he's sick."
"He has a child?"
"I think so, at least Belle says it's their son."
"Who's Belle?"
"His F-Buddy."
She inhaled deeply. After 24 hours of endless tears and after spilling her guts to Charlie first, she stood dry eyed before the judge who married her. He kissed her forehead lovingly and hugged her to him when the final words were said.
She caressed his cheek "How I love you Charlie Hamilton. You are God's gift to me."
The judge thought it rather odd for an eloping couple to be so tender with each other. He was used to coarse, almost exhibitionist couples if, obviously, eloping at such a young an age.
She spent her wedding night in the arms of both men who were trying to console her with buckets of Chunky Monkey and tissues , building a future for the son they'll have.
Rhett did arrive. At the end of the weekend, he arrived for but one night. He was told by Ashley, with a smirk of sorts that she married Charlie.
He and Belle had been in a 'no strings attached' relationship since their youth. He, with a philosophy that relationships cause nothing but jealousy and pain, having seen his parents. She, claiming to have a libido that requires special attention. She was the one who had started it while she was in a temporary break from a boyfriend she was in love with. He was comfort. Always kind and dependable with no romance involved. She grew to love it. Knowing Rhett was there. That was how she decided to ditch the man who loved her and have a child on her own.
She noticed the difference in his demeanor after that weekend. When he told her he'd rather take a break in their arrangement she asked for his help with her son claiming he was sick. It turned out to be a ploy to keep him with her. Nevertheless, she was gone. He wondered if it had been only him, but he had walked on air for three months.
She came back to the room after a long while. Melanie gave her one look and began to fuss – "Honey, what's wrong. Are you unwell?" Her attempts to hush her were futile. She skipped dinner claiming to have a migraine and went to sleep. She could not sleep. She was afraid of moving away from the small bunk bed and running into him.
It was dark. The muffled sobs woke Melanie.
"Scarlett, darling, what is it?"
She did not answer. After a while she asked "You and the captain. You were with him, weren't you?"
Scarlett nodded.
"Well, so what? You had been with plenty others before. That's one of the things I always admired. Are you feeling awkward?"
She saw Scarlett was shaking, so she removed the blankets and sat next to her "You have been with others, so what's the big deal?"
"No."
"What do you mean 'no'?" she asked perplexed.
"He was my first. My only. Didn't you know? Didn't Charlie explain?"
After a long paused confused Melanie asked "Charlie? You two slept for ages. All those other young men you'd date?".
Scarlett lifted her eyes – "Oh Melly!" she began crying again.
The other woman, as gentle as she was shook her "Don't Oh Melly me! Charles and you were—WHAT?"
Scarlett drew a long breath "I was sure you knew. Charlie loved me, but he liked men. Not me. We knew he liked men when he was 12 years old already! Didn't you know?" The shocked gaze and the open mother gave her the answer she needed.
"Oh dearie... I was his cover. You actually thought that we were -"
The other woman began laughing hysterically.
When she calmed down, she looked at her bitterly "He knew all of my preferences, I shared everything with him, but he never trusted me enough to tell me. I was sure he was only a bit colorful, kindda' like Ashley in his ways-"
"Ashley?! Ashley isn't gay. Is he?"
Melanie did not bother answering the question and waived her off with an impatient hand motion asking -"The marriage? Wade?"
"I was pregnant. That much you knew. As it was, he had always planned to father my children, and since I never really fell in love, we'd laugh and say that this is my destiny, to love only him. I thought it was a joke. But when I came crying to him, he told me he ment it. He wanted to be a father. I think he wanted to be the mother." Her eyes became hazed, but Melanie did not notice and touched her hand, so she continued "Anyway, it didn't matter."
"Why didn't you get an abortion? Is it Church."
Scarlett looked at her with a piercing look - "I escorted you to the clinic before we came here, but that wasn't right for me. I wanted him. And as I said - Charlie really wanted parenthood. It was his heart's desire."
Charlie hardly ever complained. She was three years younger after all. When she was 9 years old he was too ashamed to share his thoughts. So he kept it to himself. Or so he thought. A one event she did not even remember, in retrospect, was when Brent and Stu, mischievously pushed him to a pool. She wen behind them, pushed them both and sat on Brent's head in the water, nearly chocking him to death, yelling "Not fair, cowards! Apologize!" The twins naturally tried to make a game out of it but she was mad at them screaming that two against one was cowardly and unmanly of them. She marked him as a man. A worthy man. Her man.
The eight, nearly nine years that from his 12th birthday till Wade's conception gave him plenty time to contemplate the repercussions of his sexual identity. Scarlett, coming from a home as she had dreamed of leaving behind the constraints and making her way in a manly career, as her mother claimed, medicine, let alone surgery will create.. Since his 19th birthday the craving for normalcy burned in him.
She once shared a conversation with her mother, that no man would want a woman like her to be a mother to his children, unless she became more feminine. That's when he said - "You'll have the career and I'll be the mother."
"Had Charlie lived, I would have gone to Med school a year after. He planned on coming home to be with me and form a family of sorts."
"Your first?"
"Is that the only thing that interests you? Who got in my knickers and when? First and last."
"But.."
"No buts Melly"
"You-"
"Don't be daft." She choked.
"Andrew?"
"Mel', if you knew why ask me? I promised to keep my mouth shut. If you want names we can begin with Robert, the 22 year old doctor I claimed to date when I was barely 14, and Charlie was 17 years old, Or John, the 19 year old marine soldier that drove him to enlist, or Ed, or Nathan, or that tall Russian guy I never could say his name right, or—there were too many, he was kind of rash with his heart, the opposite of me. He married me because he loved me, as I did him. Have you any doubts at all?"
"Dear God! They were all his? Not yours? Scarlett! When they said you were loose and all – it was my slutty brother?"
When Andrew arrived, he was truly in love. She had never seen him this way. When he offered matrimony as a solution, she knew it would give him all the worlds. For some odd reason she wanted the baby too. For one minute she hadn't thought of him as anything but 'her baby', 'her boy'.
Scarlett smiled through her tears and gave out a giggle of sorts "That was the biggest laugh of all. All I ever wanted was to be left alone to dance, or ride horses, or study anatomy. It was the perfect solution. My ma wanted me to have beaus with her notions of marriage and she was anything but supportive to my endeavors to be a doctor. But I thought you knew." After a pause she smiled "And I loved flirting. It was nice to gather them around me like a queen bee of sorts."
"Queen bee my ass! Are you insane? You were gossiped about constantly. Then there was Andrew. He was special, wasn't he? He is the only one you kept in touch. You even named him Uncle Andrew to Wade."
Scarlett looked at her with dismay "Stop saying his name. No one knows of him. He has his own covers, so let us not ruin it."
Melanie choked "When you came for a sleepover, that is all that it was?"
"Darling, your brother became a soldier. What do you think would have happened to him had anyone known? And please don't talk of you know who - his career will be tarnished."
They were lying down in the dark. Melanie couldn't stop thinking
"How come you knew?"
"It was obvious to me. That's why I simply told you no when you tried to pick on me. I always knew you liked girls too. You are both so honest."
"And you didn't mind?"
"Why should I mind? I was not in love with him. It was his baggage." The answer that Charles's sexual inclination would have bothered her only if it would have deprived her of his love was so self-centered and sweet that it made Melanie smile.
"You have to tell me all about this. I lost my brother for eternity and there is so much I don't know about him."
She sat back and tried to remember -
"He knew he liked men, and I knew he liked men because we talked of them the way boys talk of girls, I guess, and that was when we were both pretty young. Me being Catholic it was as sure as hell that I couldn't speak of it out loud with anyone. It would be like speaking of the ham sandwiches I'd buy myself right before Easter, when all I was supposed to eat was jam or tuna at school. Besides, he was too good and kind to be going to hell, and if there was hell, with all that I do regularly, we were bound to be there side by side. At least that's what I told him when I was nine years old." The memory made her sad. She missed him terribly, she choked "Wade was supposed to be ours. We planned on raising children together since I turned sixteen. We'd say I'd have sex with his lover, because between us it would be complicated, and so he'd have a son from the man he loved. That's how I loved him. Only thing, I never thought I would have to pass so much of this life without him. You know, you and he are so alike. That's why I moved in with you."
Melanie looked at her, and she realized how horribly lonely Scarlett must have been feeling. She hugged her without words.
"You let all the girls talk of you so badly, when in fact there was nothing?"
She shrugged "They never liked me anyhow, even before sex was involved. In fact, I kindda' liked it at first, at least when I was thirteen, it sort of made me more interesting."
"And India? Surely Stu wasn't one of them?"
She laughed "I'd kiss Charlie constantly on his lips in public. I even kissed Andrew in front of Frank once. So I kissed him too, as a favor. To make her jealous. We were horse buddies. We went on camp together and I had to hear him fart all night once. That kills attraction in the bud at 14."
The other one shook her head in awe. She shut her eyes for a minute.
"So we are?"
"You are my sister. Wade's aunt. Charlie was his father by choice, had he lived, we would have raised him together. I love you, you do know that, don't you?"
After a few minutes much like Wade would in the future Scarlett asked in a small voice "Hug me till I fall asleep?"
The other woman looked at her with sorrowful eyes, but then a mischievous smile came out of her small heart shaped face "Thought you didn't like my fondling"