Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
Scarlett hardly knew herself any more. She had gone to the barbecue at Twelve Oaks intent upon winning the love of her life and ended up married to a man who left a child with her but otherwise no mark whatsoever. After a year of having that child and mourning, she went to Atlanta intent upon having fun. She'd wanted to dance and flirt and see the love of her life. Nothing had happened the way she wanted. The love of her life was no fun at all when she saw him, and all of the fun she did have came through a no-good varmint.
Since the siege had started in Atlanta, she'd had to stop hiding from the horror of the hospitals. She'd had to be truly helpful. Then she'd gone back to the Hamilton House, where she'd had to sit with the wife of the love of her life and offer solace and comfort to the woman. Suddenly, when she'd least expected it, she discovered something within herself she hadn't known was there. The no-good varmint knew. He kissed her and touched her and made her feel so many things. Passion, he'd called it. Now he was gone, but that feeling was not. If, late in the evening she sat someplace quiet and let it wash over her, she could well remember the longing that she had for him, something that the love of her life never made her feel.
She'd come home to Tara, and there had been no end of work. Half the day was spent finding and preparing food while the other half was spent picking the cotton that might, if they were lucky, pay the taxes. The Confederate government always used to take cotton in lieu of money. One could only hope. All of the cotton that had been saved since the blockade got too tight was gone. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth, burned to ashes as the Yankees left. "At least they left us the house," whispered Pa, but Scarlett wasn't sure he believed it. Pa hadn't been entirely himself since then. Scarlett got up in the mornings and worked as hard as she could, hoping against hope that if they could make Tara into Tara again, perhaps he would come to himself.
Mother was hardly any better, but her frailty was different. She hadn't wanted to recover from the typhoid. It was plain to Scarlett, especially when she saw the faces of Mammy and Dilcey, that Mother had given up. Yet she was interested in the family again, and that interest kept her going. Mammy said she took the turn when told of Scarlett's marriage to Rhett. Her eyes, which had been dull and glassy, suddenly took a new light in them. Yet, for the most part, Mother didn't seem to have an ounce of strength, and although Scarlett was sure restoring Tara would help Pa, she wasn't sure what would bring Mother back. She needed help just to get her dress on every morning, until the day of the Yankee deserter.
Scarlett was changing the bed linens when she heard him ride up to the front porch. Glancing out the window, she saw that he was a Union soldier, but he didn't seem to be with any others. She felt, rather than heard, the door open and close, and she was suddenly filled with rage that he would trespass. Didn't the armies take everything there was already? She crept down the stairs, stopping to grab Rhett's dueling pistol and got to the room he was standing in. He was rooting through Mother's box. Then he saw her.
"Well, aren't you pretty? Have you got something for me?" He pointed to her right arm. Her hand was hidden in her skirt.
"You leave that alone," she said. "It doesn't belong to you."
"It belongs to me if I say it does," he smiled, with a dirty, sleazy grin. "For that matter, I might say you belong to me, too. What do you think of that?"
The Yankee took a step toward her, and Scarlett stepped back. He took another step, reaching out his hand. Remembering Rhett's words to her about the money belt, Scarlett reached around with her right arm and pulled the trigger.
"Scarlett!" Mother was standing on the landing.
Scarlett looked down. There was a small fountain of red coming from the soldier's neck. "Your box, Mother... He was going through your box, and then he was reaching for me." She looked up helplessly. "Rhett told me..."
Mother came down the stairs with a stiff agility that belied the fact she'd barely been out of her bedroom in two full months. "Go get one of those dirty sheets from the hallway," she directed Scarlett, patting her on the back to set her on her way.
When Scarlett came back down, her mother was saying the Lord's Prayer.
"Is he-are you trying to save him?"
"No, dear." Mother's voice was full of assurance and command. "He's not going to recover from that wound."
"So I've done murder, now."
"I'm fairly certain he was going to hurt you, perhaps all of us, and you did the only thing you could. Still... he shouldn't leave this earth without a chance for redemption." Mother stood and swayed just a bit before Scarlett reached to steady her. They watched until the man's eyes went from glassy and scared to dull and lifeless. "We need to wrap him up and bury him so that no other Yankees find him, and we need to clean the floor."
Scarlett nodded.
They said the Rosary as they dug the grave under the arbor, and again as they cleaned up the blood in the hallway. After they finally had a chance to sit in mother's office and go over the contents of the Yankee's pockets, Mother sat back and said a prayer of thanksgiving. "There must be close to fifty dollars here, in gold!"
Scarlett's eyes grew wide. "We already had a little..."
Ellen nodded. "I know from talking to your father that Captain Butler left you some sort of nest egg that you've been parting with a dollar or two at a time, but this will certainly help to extend it."
Scarlett nodded. She wasn't sure how to tell Mother, but that wasn't all Captain Butler had left her with. She hated to put the burden on the family of one more mouth to feed and one less set of hands to work at full capacity. She swallowed hard. Now that the crisis was past, she was feeling quite ill. She wasn't given much time to prevaricate. It turned out that Mother had been waiting for some sign, expecting that Scarlett would easily take with child given how short a time it took with her first husband and how long a time her second husband had.
The next morning, Mother and Mammy kept Scarlet in the house and questioned her. When they established all of the symptoms she had, they examined her. Then in an exchange of glances that spanned many combined years of midwifery, they nodded and told Scarlett that it seemed she was indeed with child.
It wasn't like before. Scarlett couldn't sit idly and mourn as she had the last time. She had to help as much as she could with the farm. Fortunately, by the time she was unable to do much, it was the winter and most of the chores involved keeping warm and fed. There was no husband to mourn, either, just one to worry about. After Christmas, there was one solitary letter to read over and over. Where was he now, and was he safe? Where she spent much of her time in Atlanta sneaking into Melanie's bedroom to read Ashley's letters, now she read and re-read her own letter, wishing it said what Ashley's said one time: Darling, I'm coming home to you. Scarlett would imagine the letter said that, and then went to help with whatever needed doing next, humming "When this Cruel War is Over."
April came, and seed was somehow found to plant, although goodness knew how many acres they could manage with just a few people to work and just the Yankee deserter's horse to help. Yet Mother and Pa made their plans, discussing it with Scarlett every day, until suddenly the word came that the war was over. It came with what turned out to be the first of many soldiers passing through. They were all hungry and needed a good bath. Some were sick and needed to be nursed to health before they could travel much farther. Ellen sighed and sent them around back to where Mammy and Dilcey worked out a system within a day or two.
The men were usually covered with vermin and so were not allowed into the house. There was a sort of sick room rigged on the back porch for those who needed to be nursed. Ellen O'Hara, who cared even for those trashy Slatterys, couldn't be dissuaded from caring for the poor heroes of the Glorious Cause. Scarlett, who never could pass a sick bed without hearing Melanie in the back of her head, wondering if someone far away was helping Ashley, assisted her mother with little complaint.
Somehow the cotton was planted. It would be a small crop, but it was a crop, safely in the ground and trusted now to God and nature. Somehow food was found for all the mouths that the family had to feed. One or two of the soldiers would stay for a couple of days and help on the farm in exchange for what the O'Haras were able to give them. The family limped through the month of April and was into May.
One soldier came and never left. Will Benteen was a solid Georgia man, but not of the class of Gerald and certainly far away from Ellen. The war had taken one of his legs, and he had no desire to go back to the home he'd had before. Yet he loved to work the land and took a shine to Tara. He stayed one day and helped with the planting. That day turned into a week and then the cotton was planted and he made some suggestions for some corn. Then there was planting for the kitchen garden. By the time he'd been there a month, he spoke with Gerald, who after a few minutes asked Ellen and Scarlett to join them. Will had offered to stay on, to get the farm going again and perhaps take wages when money was available. It seemed like a Godsend, since Scarlett was by now incapable of doing many tasks beyond tending Wade and occasionally failed at that when exhaustion overcame her.
During the evenings that spring, Scarlett sat on the porch, huge with child, and felt it move. She pictured Rhett as she went through this. Was he the sort of husband to be horrified by the changes to a woman's body, the weight gain, the way various fluids leaked from everywhere, not to mention what it did to one's skin and hair? Or was he the sort of man who would take pride in his increasing wife, who would be amazed by the bumps and kicks of an active child? Rhett did love children. He was so gentle and kind with Wade. She wondered almost every night if Rhett had any idea that he'd left her with child. Remembering his instructions, she decided he'd had an idea of it, perhaps a hope. He'd been very specific, as though he wanted a child. He wanted her to go with the child to Charleston if he never came back. Perhaps she would, if they could ever get ahead of the work at Tara. There was so much to do, and Mother and Pa were so changed. It wasn't just herself that Scarlett didn't quite recognize any more.
May came, and there were more soldiers every day. There was always someone to tend or feed, always someone who needed help. The family did what they could for everyone who stopped by, and everyone left a little better than they came. It was a great deal of work. Scarlett was helping to set the kitchen to rights after breakfast when she suddenly had to sit down.
"What is it?" asked Mammy, who came over and looked Scarlett in the face. Scarlett couldn't answer, and Mammy hollered to Prissy, who was hiding on the back porch. "Prissy, get Miss Scarlett upstairs and into bed. I'll go find Miss Ellen. That baby is coming!"
A/N: As I mentioned in my other story, this is not the chapter I'm most proud of ever having written, especially since I flubbed a few things in the last chapter. We're going to pretend that the last chapter was Ellen's POV (since it mostly was) and the problem with continuity is because this chapter is Scarlett's POV, which creates overlap.
Once again, I feel the need to point out that this story is not all there in my head. The other two long stories I've written were entirely in my head before I started posting them. For the record, I know exactly how Exes is going to end (Stardust), but in this story I only have the vaguest idea of what's going to happen in the next one or two chapters. I have to do a fair amount of re-reading to keep things consistent but not the same story all over again, and it can be slow going. I know that's less fun for the readers, because it slows
Thanks so much to readers and reviewers, including Francis-rose, samandfreddie, gabyhyatt, Phantom710, I Dream of Spring, romabeachgirl, Scarlett Rhose, 1life2ROCK, kanga85, , Wiolka, whoknows3, Truckee Gal, Guest 1 & 2, Conlyn70, Francis-rose, and MissTricey.