"Wade has become a fine young man, hasn't he?"

Pursing her lips, Scarlett turned to gaze at the slender blond man sitting by her side with sharp, unblinking eyes.

"Hmph. He may be old enough to vote, to ride, and to shoot straight, but that doesn't make him a man, no more than being able to give birth makes a girl a woman...although he certainly drinks like one," Scarlett replied tartly, but her brow was furrowed with worry.

Wade had indeed grown into a tall, handsome man. He had his father's large brown eyes and thick honey curls, but that was about where the resemblance ended. He had none of his sire's fumbling awkwardness; he moved with a languid, easy grace that unsettled Scarlett although she could never articulate why. His eyes were framed with thick brown lashes that glinted dangerously in the sun, his tousled locks fell carelessly over the high ivory forehead, and he possessed a crooked smile that cut like a knife, a smile that he had often found more useful than any blade in extricating himself from sticky situations. He was as gentle as a puppy to those he loved, but there was a violent restlessness that danced like fire in those red-brown eyes. It happened more than once that Scarlett was called to his school, to the headmaster's office, where she would find him as he always was in such situations, lounging on the chair as cool as you please, smiling with vacant satisfaction as the sweat dribbled down his cut, bruised face. The headmaster never answered the door for he was always occupied with restraining the outraged parents, their own whelp lying in the corner, beaten to a pulp. He was always more than eager to throw hands if anybody made his sister cry or questioned his mother's honor and the boys in town had given him plentiful opportunities to do so and he had happily obliged.

He fought like a rabid animal, using his teeth when his size wasn't enough or if he had left his weapon of choice at home...or even if he hadn't. But he had lost many fights before he began winning them: the twice broken nose the clearest evidence of that. But the disfigurement only served to enhance his allure, as girls whispered and wondered what underhanded shenanigans such a mild mannered young man could have ever gotten himself mixed up in. Wade was seemingly oblivious to such whispers, treating these not so covert admirers with a careless, offhand manner that only inflamed their interest. But these same charms had the opposite effect on the male sex, and resentful mutters and venomous side glances often followed him through hallways and streets, but he saw no need to watch his back, for he felt that the loaded pistol and switchblade in his pockets were more than enough to deter anybody foolish enough to try to corner him in some alleyway.

We wouldn't have had a problem licking the Yankees if even half the army had been filled with such men or perhaps we would have lost at Bull Run, for what good are soldiers who can't tell the difference between friend and foe?

The boy also rode like a madman. He would barrel through the streets at breakneck speed, frightening people and horses alike, lashing his poor steed and digging his spurs into the beast's side until it was foaming with exhaustion. At Tara, even Beatrice had whistled with incredulous admiration as he flew past her, soaring over several fences in succession, whooping with delight and raising a cloud of dust in his wake. Scarlett had stood to the side, smiling with grim resignation. But on one occasion, he chose a particularly obstinate mount that had planted its feet at the foot of the fence, and he had flown off, landing hard on his rump; he was on his feet in an instant, brushing himself off and cursing. He managed to remount the frightened animal, but at the sight of his mother standing there, stiff and wide-eyed, her fingernails digging into her white face, his eyes had flashed with understanding and he had immediately alighted, muttering an apology as he took her hand and kissed her cheek. And he had promptly ceased all such equestrian activities...in front of her, at least.

He always accompanied Scarlett whenever she headed into town, looming over her like some glowering bodyguard and Scarlett had often watched him from the corner of her eye, wondering where on earth her timid, stuttering boy had gone. But whenever she would try to scold him, he would duck his head and look so much like that contrite little boy that she would always sigh and run a hand through his curls and massage his bruised knuckles.

He has all the temperance and even temper of the Tarleton's and Fontaine's rolled into one...although he could certainly give them a run for their money now. He certainly doesn't lack for wit; he's the only man I know who can cite scripture while in his cups, but that liver of his is going to have a difficult time keeping pace with that brain in a few years.

"And Ella…I can hardly recognize her sometimes."

"She looks more like Beatrice's than mine now," Scarlett said, raising her cup to her lips.

Ashley looked her full in the face then, tracing each of her features with his slow, gray gaze, his lips curving into a soft, easy smile.

"I'd always thought she took after you."

Scarlett was about to take a sip, but at these words, she set the cup down on the table with a loud clatter and glared at him.

You really are a fool, aren't you?

Womanhood had taken Ella by surprise, endowing her with all of its mysterious gifts. She had always been a clumsy, gangly thing, tripping over her skirts and rabbit feet, but at the age of twelve, the babyish softness had faded from her cheeks and her face took on the apple shape of a woman's. She had lost weight, her waist had thinned out, and she had shot up like a transplanted tree. The straggly ginger mess that had always sat atop her head was now a mass of shiny auburn waves that cascaded down her waist. She had a small gap between her teeth, which she hid behind her dimpled white hands and shy smiles, but the flaw was almost endearing and when she was dressed in all her finery with the smallest dab of rouge on her nose and cheeks, she was almost comely. But she was such a clingy, insecure thing: she would latch onto anyone who showed her even the smallest inkling of kindness. On more than one occasion, Scarlett had found her sobbing into her pillow over some boy she had had fallen madly in love with...although she could never remember their names.

But at Tara, all that reserve evaporated like dew in the sun; she laughed freely, carelessly, with that half-mocking laugh and upturned eyes. She stood on those rolling, sweeping hills with one hand pressed to the front of her battered straw hat, her red locks shimmering round her face like fire, the sunburn creeping over the freckled cheeks until she grew bright as a tomato and she would bask in the sun until she was as brown as a nut. She regarded Beatrice with almost hero worship, hanging on her every word and Beatrice had reciprocated, declaring one night that the war may have taken her four sons, but Reconstruction had given her another daughter. There was always a plate and spare bed set for Ella whenever she visited Fairhill and she had quickly become an unofficial member of the family, often opting to stay there instead of Tara and begging Scarlett whenever she came back on holiday to go there instead of staying at their "dreary old prison." At Fairhill, she was as lively as an elf and free as any savage, tumbling with the Tarleton girls, racing with their horses, and frolicking with their hounds, their excited screams and shrieks ringing through the air, saturating it with the flavor of golden days gone forever...

With a cursory glance at the clock, Scarlett stood, pushing her chair back with a screech.

"It's late. I'd better leave now. I'll finish the rest tomorrow."

Tugging on her gloves and fastening her cloak, she strode briskly towards the back door.

"Where are you going?"

Scarlett laughed, tasting the bitterness on her lips.

"Ashley, it's the middle of the night. Do you realize how it would look to the rest of the town if a married woman like myself was caught sneaking out from another man's house? People might talk."

He was on his feet then, and with a few long strides, crossed the length of the room, blocking her path. But he said nothing and just stood there, rubbing the back of his neck. His shining eyes were glued to the floor, his cheeks were flushed, and the back of his neck bled to crimson.

She watched him with narrowed eyes. He had been unusually reserved all evening. He had asked her over to help balance the books and Scarlett had thought nothing of it, inviting herself in and dispensing with the task as dutifully as any soldier, but he didn't lean on the desk or watch over her shoulder as was his custom and had chosen instead to stare at her from the doorway for an hour before finally pulling up a chair besides her, assessing her with that strange watchful gleam in his eyes...

Her heart dropped into her stomach; an icy wind chilled her heart. Clenching her jaw and fists, she stood there as one who knew what was to come but was powerless to stop it.

"Ashley, we've been over this. The matter's closed."

"Scarlett, you haven't even heard what I-"

"I've heard all there is to hear."

"But my dear, you have not. There's so much you haven't heard."

Her entire being throbbing with exhaustion, Scarlett slowly made her way to the window and stood there, staring into the void. She felt him come up behind her and stiffened. He tentatively placed his hands on her shoulders and when she didn't move, his grip tightened. Scarlett closed her eyes.

"Alright then, Ashley. We are old friends, after all so I'll hear you out. What do you want?"

"Scarlett, I am asking you to marry me."

Adultery and now bigamy? You ask much of me, Ashley.

"If you haven't already forgotten, I still have a husband."

"Yes, you do."

He slowly spun her around and his intent eyes searched her quivering ones. He hesitated before speaking, but when he did, his voice was cool and clear:

"And why is that still the case?"

"Ashley," she said wearily, "please…for Melly's sake, for Beau's sake...let it alone."

"My darling, why must you do this to yourself? It's been years; it has been more than enough time. The gossip has come and gone...even Wade..."

"Ashley, this is me you are speaking of; for Atlanta, that means no amount of time will ever be enough...and why are you discussing these matters with my son?"

"On the contrary, Scarlett. Wade's been raising the issue with me."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. He brings it up every time he...every time he visits Beau."

He rubbed the bottom of his face.

"Wade's an intelligent young man with a good head on his shoulders. He understands more than you think."

"He may look like a man and certainly has all the vices of ones I have known, but that doesn't make him one."

He gently took her limp white paws in his own. She wanted to wrench her hands away, but couldn't find the strength to do so in the midst of her exhaustion.

"That may be true, but that doesn't make his concerns any less legitimate...Scarlett, Wade has been asking me why I haven't asked you to marry me."

"Did you tell him that you had?"

He grimaced.

"No, I haven't, Scarlett. If you remember, the circumstances had been less than...ideal."

The only thing you lack more than spine is shame.

And I remember, all right. I'll remember that particular proposal until my dying day; it had been even worse than my last. If Melly hadn't been lying right in front of us, I would have given you the palm of my hand.

He lightly smoothed over the palms of her hands with his thumbs.

"Scarlett, I...I have never truly thanked you for saving Melanie and Beau that night, for saving us all. I never thanked you for fighting for me, for standing by my side, and for showing me how to live with purpose."

She would stop this conversation before they reached the point of no return, as if they hadn't already been at that point for years.

"I don't need your thanks, Ashley. Seeing you and Beau alive and healthy is thanks enough for me."

She feebly tried to tug her hands away, but he only clung to them harder.

"Scarlett, I never should have come home. I should have died with my comrades, alongside my childhood friends...but I failed to do even that and when I did finally come home, I thought there was nothing worth living for, nothing worth fighting for, but I held on to life...or a semblance of it because of Melanie and Beau...but I've come to realize in these past few years, that I had also held on because of you. Scarlett, everything that I have, everything that I am now...I owe it all to you.

You don't owe me very much then.

But there was a tenseness to his pose, a glow to this eyes, a force to his words, and a throbbing heat to his skin, that she had never seen or heard before, had never known could exist in him, but no…she had seen him this way once, only once and on that day…

Her throat constricted and the blood drained from her face. Her heart promptly turned to ice.

"The world that Melanie and I built and shared together, the world we resided in, that world where reality was the dream and the dream reality...I thought I could never share such a thing with anyone. But I realize now that it wasn't quite true. There may never have been two people as different as we, but there's also much that we have shared, that we still share. Scarlett, I have known you since we were both children, since you were a little girl romping with my sisters and chasing after possums, and I loved you before you even knew I existed. I have been to Tara. I have walked on its soil with you while it was still whole and pure. I sang with you, danced with you, and loved you through those golden years. We have lost so much, you and I, and yet we somehow survived. We are still here, and, in many ways, we are the only ones here."

"My feelings for you...they are very real. It's true: I wanted you. I have wanted you for years. I still want you. I always will. I was afraid of my desire and was ashamed to admit to anyone, but why should I feel ashamed? How does my desiring you make me different from any other man? We all wanted you for your beauty, loved you for your fire and strength, and worshiped the ground you walked on as you carved out a world for yourself when we who fought could only see the end of ours."

That was precisely the problem, wasn't it? I thought you were different from other men.

"But you were wrong that night, Scarlett. What I feel for you isn't mere lust. What I told you that day at Tara...I meant every word of it. It wasn't just your beauty, Scarlett. I loved you for who you were."

Liar. You lied to me and even worse, you lied and continue to lie to yourself. You didn't want to marry me because you knew who I was, but you also didn't want me to belong to someone else.

"After Melanie died, I thought I had died as well. I was lost. I was going through the motions. I was a dead man walking. In many ways, I was living to die. But you brought me out of the dark...Scarlett, I am not like Rhett. The past that we share and all of these memories, all of its fleeting pleasures and everlasting pains...I am not afraid of them. I will never run from them. I will never run from you. I hold these memories dear to my heart, but I can and want to move forward. You were right, my dear. The past is dead. I am tired of living in dreams, of grasping at shadows."

"I was a coward because I could not choose, but I am making the choice I should have made years ago. Scarlett, I am choosing you."

Her mouth was agape and her eyes were swimming with despair.

Melly. I promised too much to you that night.

"You've suffered enough. You've suffered more than most do in two lifetimes. Scarlett, divorce him. Let go of him as he had done with you. Any obligation you may have had to him as a wife, as a woman, died the moment he chose to walk out that door. Why live with a ghost from the past when you could have a better, brighter future with the living?"

He spoke with all the passion and fire of a man at his first proposal, but Scarlett felt no stir in her heart; there was nothing but a throbbing emptiness. She imagined herself as Ashley's wife, as Mrs. George Ashley Wilkes, and she felt like a woman defeated. She imagined herself lying beneath him with his pasty white hands roaming all over her flesh, of kissing him, pleasuring him, of taking him inside her, and she tasted the bile at the back of her throat. She imagined herself growing fat and bloated as his seed took root in her womb and bearing his children: anemic little boys and sickly little girls with the same lost dog look as their father's and she wanted nothing more than for the earth to swallow her whole.

I'll marry you Ashley. I'll marry you when Hell freezes over, when our children's children are dead and their bones have become naught but ashes...I will marry you then and no sooner.

He smiled fondly.

"Scarlett, I still remember that offer, the one you had made to me that day at Tara...but why should it only be that? A memory of an offer? It's too late for him, but it's not too late for you, for us. We could leave it all behind, start anew."

"And where on earth are we to go, Ashley Wilkes?"

"Anywhere, it doesn't matter so long as we are together."

You're mad. Utterly mad. It's a wonder we all didn't end up in the asylum, the way we fed off and played onto each others' madness. I suppose Melly had been about the only thing tethering us to reality. And with her buried beneath the earth these last few years...I suppose we all have reached our breaking points.

His hair was a gold crown; she could feel the heat radiating from his body. His warm breath caressed her cheek and his face was so close to hers that she could see every one of those golden eyelashes.

"Scarlett, will you marry me?"

She glanced at his hands, at the long jointed fingers; his hands were cold, dead weights, his eyes, those stormy gray eyes, the eyes she had once fantasized about in her dreams and even while she had been in the throes of passion with another man...she had seen a drowned man once floating in the river; they had fished his bloated body out and laid it on the shore. It had been filled to the brim with worms...and his eyes...were the same color as that man's tongue.

"Even if I weren't already married, I wouldn't want to marry you. I wouldn't want to marry anyone. Quite frankly, I think I never wanted to be married."

"That day at Twelve Oaks, at Tara..."

"Ashley, that girl is dead and buried."

And then she felt the ire claw through her.

I know what this is. You can't stand living in this crumbling excuse of a house with that old maid and that dawdling, slack-mouthed son of yours. Or perhaps you are simply discontented with having an empty bed, so why not settle for a childhood playmate with a bank vault for a dowry and a steady income from a source that you know will never run dry? Why not save us all the fuss of obtaining a marriage license and go to a whorehouse? I know such a thing has always been beneath you, but in your case it would have been your only virtue...and our saving grace.

He pulled away, his lips pressed into a tight line as he quickly traced her features.

"He's back, isn't he?"

She answered with her silence.

"And for how long this time? A week? A month? Maybe three if the weather permits."

Your wife's death has certainly loosened your tongue. How you have the gall to stand before me, to touch me, and to say such things to me after everything is beyond me.

"What goes on in our marriage isn't any of your business, Ashley."

"I am only thinking of your happiness, my dear."

"And since when have you cared about my happiness?"

He swallowed and ducked his head, his face falling into its usual bitter lines.

"You're right, Scarlett. All of these years, I was never forward with you about my feelings or about...anything...I told myself that it was because I didn't want to hurt you and Melanie, but it was never about you or even her. I was only trying to save myself."

She surveyed him, her mouth twisted with disgust.

You could have saved all of us from a world of hurt if you had come to this realization twenty years ago. Then again, I suppose such a thing is too much to ask from the likes of you.

Ashley leaned in once more, pulling her hands to his heart.

"But things can and will be different now. I am different now. Scarlett, won't you even consider my offer?"

"You fool. They will eat us alive. And even if you don't care about that, think of Beau, of Wade, and Ella. What would they think? They may not know everything but they know enough. And what of your wife, what of Melanie? Everything that Melly has done for us, these years of peace that she had bought and paid for with her life, everything will have been for naught."

But he didn't flinch or shudder as he had the first time; the flame in his eyes only licked higher:

"Melly would have wanted us to be happy."

The man just wasn't understanding; it seemed that she would have to put her foot down.

"Ashley, I don't love you. I love," but then the breath seemed to leave her body, "I love...Rhett."

He smiled bleakly.

"But my dear...he's wanted you, he's had you, you say he loved you and yet he left you all the same."

The words didn't register at first, but when they did, she felt the blood rush to her face and boil in her ears. A sickening pain tore at her heart and white lights burst in her eyes. Wrenching her hands away, she slapped him with all the strength she could muster and he stumbled backwards, clutching his lip. But she couldn't see his face; she couldn't see anything but she could still see her, the idiot girl wet with love, her red lips engorged with want and eyes overflowing with desire, and she wanted to slap that stupid fool into oblivion as well, and so she did, with a backhand blow that left an imprint of her knuckles on the finely carved cheekbone.

It was dead silent. They gazed at one another, his face ashen and lip bloody, hers a shifting mixture of alabaster and crimson. Her chest was heaving and her eyes were two wheeling pools of light.

"Scarlett, I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I-"

He reached for her, but she recoiled from him. She was moving now, her feet pulling her to the door. She tore it open, the rusty hinges creaking loudly in protest: the wind swept through the room, slapping her face and sending a whirlwind of papers flying about. She turned to face him: there was nothing but revulsion and hatred etched into the sharp lines of her white face and when she spoke, her voice, cold and clear, carried through the room:

I never want to see or speak to you again, but she could no more say that now than she could that night.

Such was the power the dead held over the living.

You're right, Ashley. We've been dead for years.