Rhett Butler was a bastard. A destroyer of all hopes and dreams.

It's not like she didn't try to win him back on those first visits after he left. She had tried. For the first year, she tried to engage him both in person and in letters. The man who cried and fell apart after her miscarriage, how could he be gone? It wasn't that long a time in between. She was still recovering when Bonnie died.

He had been so cruel in response to her efforts. The words, the mocking, cruel words. She could write a book of them. The last time, right before she decided to give up had been the worst. She'd tried to touch him, and he had gone crazy, yelling and cursing and nearly pushing her down. Wrenching and twisting her wrists, always her wrists. And then he went on a rant, taking out all of his self-loathing on her. She was the target of all that went wrong in his life, in their marriage.

In a rare moment of insight she realized that it made it easier for him to hate her, whether it was completely fair or not. And when it came to emotions, Rhett was always going to take the easy way out.

He went back to being aloof and poker-faced immediately after that incident, of course, but it had been too late. At the end, it came to this: a woman can only handle being called a whore and a horrible mother by her husband so many times. Especially one who had not been touched by any man in more than two years. What did he think of women, anyway? He even called Belle, the woman he ran to, the one with a heart of gold, an illiterate whore. The two most important women in his life at one time, and even then he couldn't help but call them whores and trollops, illiterate and ignorant. Maybe he didn't really respect women at all. His mother had certainly done him no favors.

So Scarlett made a list, day by day after he left, of all that had gone wrong and all that he had done wrong. And it had been plenty. And when her heart hurt, when she missed him, when she realized a big part of what he had said the day Melly died was right, she read that list. Over and over.

Perhaps things had gotten so dark to punish them after he stole that money, those ill-gotten gains? She couldn't blame him for all of it. But now Bonnie was dead and her life ruined. Spoiling and petting and indulging doesn't make a parent. He only was able to be a proper parent to Wade and Ella because they weren't his property, not like she and Bonnie had been. He did treat her and Bonnie the same, and it had ruined both of them. Rhett didn't know how to love a woman any more than she knew how to love a man. At least she could blame her youth.

All she knew was that she was hurting, with no end in sight. Scarlett sought comfort at the Catholic church and received none. She confessed. She walked down Church Street, wondering if she could find something to help. Read the bible. Tried to remember her mother and mammy's teachings. She didn't know Rhett. Didn't understand him. Never had.

A street musician, dirty and unkempt, came up to her one day as she sat listlessly on a bench in the park and put his hand on her head in a gesture of compassion. It was the first time a man had touched her since the last wrist-wrenching. She cried for hours.

Afterward, she decided to attempt a different type of trying. She read books with the children, all the books in their little library, searching for knowledge. She went to Ashley and asked him, humbly, to show her where she should start on a literary education. Dutifully she studied, embarrassed retroactively for the allusions and references she never caught. She listened outside Wade's tutoring sessions, and made notes, on the law, the classics, everything he was learning. She practiced Latin and French with Ella. She tried.

'I have to grow up,' she told herself. 'And I have to learn. If he's too old and broken to change, well then, I have to accept it. If he's made up his mind that he can't be with me, I have to accept it. For now. Just for now. One day at a time and tomorrow can always be better.'

'Why, we are both children,' she thought. 'In our own ways. But Rhett would never accept that.' He was all man in his mind. And she knew, knew hoping against hope, that if he had decided not to let himself love her, he would not. Even if he wanted to, deep inside.

She wallowed in the sadness for a good while. And then she proceeded to file for divorce.

Thanks to RT4ever for the 'Rhett Destroyer of all Hopes and Dreams' idea. I know it's been a lot of exposition so far, there will be action and dialogue coming up soon. I just couldn't wade through more nasty conversations, and we all know who's been winning all the arguments up until now. Things are about to change, however ... .