Disclaimer: The characters belong to MM.

Again, thanks for the reviews, they are much appreciated. I know it isn't a happy beginning and I see several ways it could progress and end. Will keep you posted.

Chapter 5

She awoke after what was probably only a brief slumber, but felt refreshed nonetheless. She swung herself from the daybed and entered their room through the connecting door, intending to check on Rhett. She was surprised to see him sitting up again, with Garreth nestled against his chest. Garreth was apparently showing his father a rock and a leaf he had found in the park and now clutched in his fist, and regaling him with tales of a green snake he had seen with Ella.

They both looked up when she entered, an eerie resemblance in their expression despite their disparate features. Scalett smiled - one of the many gifts the good fairies had bestowed upon Garreth at his christening was his supreme indifference to his status as a sacrificial lamb. He had apparently decided he wanted to be reassured about Rhett's state of health, had found him, demanded a hug and a story and now was ready to be off again.

"Garreth. Daddy needs some rest now." Garreth hopped from the bed, giving both his father and his mother one of his famed limpid stares.

"It was a silly idea to ride Rouge Noir, Daddy. I've watched him. He spooks even when a swallow chirps by the stalls. He isn't safe to ride on Main Street. I would have thought you'd know better." The tone of mild reproof, entirely incongruous with his age and statue, made Scarlett grin.

Rhett nodded. "You are quite right, my boy. It was a silly thing to do."

She waited until Garreth had pulled the door behind him, and giggled. "I never know what he will say next. And he does know the horses better than anyone. Jack, the youngest stable boy, told me last week Garreth talks to them in their language and they do his bidding. I'm waiting for them to tell me he whistles the swallows down from the sky."

Rhett raised an ironic eyebrow. "Too bad he didn't put a word in with Rouge Noir not to throw me off."

She laughed. "How are you feeling?"

"Like hell". She had no trouble believing him, although his skin had regained some of the rugged color and he looked less like death chewed over and spit out than even this morning.

"Your mother and Rosemary are here".

He made an impatient movement, probably in anticipation of his mother's fussing. "I know. "

She sat down by his bedside, smiling with years of practice in ignoring her true feelings.

"Garreth has a point," she said gently. "It was a rather silly idea to ride that horse."

He shrugged, the mantle of indifference already falling back onto his shoulders, the brief moment fading. "You wouldn't understand".

And there it was, right in front of her. The toll-bridge to a country in whose borderlands she had lived for nearly half a decade. Taking a deep breath, Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler stepped onto the windswept plains of adulthood, where few trees provide shade from the sun or the icy winds, but where clear sight is possible for the daring all the way up to the far horizons. She stepped forward firmly, and without even thinking to ask the price of admission. She was thirty-four.

"You haven't the first idea about what I understand Rhett."

It was, by anyone's standards, a mild outburst, and he had no way of knowing what it portended. His lips had quivered again with sardonic amusement, a more robust quiver than the one she had surprised earlier. "Indeed. Pray continue".

"In order to know what another person understands one would have to talk to them. About other things than dinner, the weather, or the latest news from the farm. You haven't spoken to me about anything important since you came back five years ago. I used to wish you would. Pray you would." She shrugged., her eyes turned inwards, not knowing or caring that she was beautiful with her black hair waving about her shoulders and her strange eyes blazing. "I've long since accepted that you simply don't care anymore. God knows you've shown me often enough. But don't tell me what I do and don't understand."

"You startle me, Mrs Butler. But do share your perceptions. I am, I admit, not quite at my best, but I am waiting with... baited breath for your insight"

She sighed. "You're no different than other men Rhett. I used to think you were, but I just didn't know better. You ride the wildest horse in the stall because some part of you wishes you'll break your neck. Because you think you've done your duty and you have no one to answer to anymore. Just like Pa did after Mother died. We have money enough. You don't love me, Wade is gone, Ella will probably marry soon and Garreth is, well, Garreth. So you play with death because it's as close to feeling anything as you can get after losing Bonnie. And of course you're being a fool. But being a fool never stopped you."

There was an indefinable expression in his eyes when he looked at her.

"You have become quite the sorceress, my dear. Or is it a clairvoyant? In either case, it is rather disturbing. I feel the need to speak to our pastor about an exorcism of our humble abode once I'm recovered."

"More words, Rhett", Scarlett jeered. "You used to be good with words when you were still making an effort but I never thought they helped you much even then. I don't understand your words but your eyes say I hit close enough to the mark and you don't like it."

Strike two. He actually flinched this time. She felt a quick flush of triumph, and it made her careless. She picked up the plate with bread and cheeses and sat down on the bed. "Now eat. You need to regain your strength. Some silly person I once knew told me bodies mean nothing but they didn't know what they were talking about. About that, and other things either."

She wasn't quite sure what possessed her to bring up that broken wild night from another lifetime, but she relished the return of real anger into his black eyes.

Yet he said, almost lazily ,"An insight that must have been foremost in your mind when you banned me from your bed."

"Don't be tiresome, Rhett", Scarlett sighed. "I was little more than a child when you married me. How much of a child I only started to realize when I look at Ella. I was more mature than she maybe but not by much. And you – you should have known better. When we were married you were even older than I am now. How could you have been so foolish?"

The sardonic smile had become a sneer. "I loved you. Thankfully, that was a mistake your obsession with the honorable Ashley Wilkes helped rectify." He was watching her narrowly now out of his good eye, like a fencer spoiled by past victories who suddenly finds himself unable to anticipate his opponent's next strike.

Scarlett took a deep breath. "I know how much I've hurt you when I thought I was in love with Ashley. I tried to make it up to you in every way that I knew except you never gave me half a chance. I understand losing Bonnie nearly killed you. I understand you don't care anymore and you're only here because of your so-called duty. But cutting yourself off from life is a choice and you're making it every day and I am done, done I tell you, watching you do this without saying something."

His face was like granite, and even the past blandness could not have rivaled the deceptive smoothness of his tone. "Perhaps not everyone has a mind so plastic or a memory quite so flexible. I seem to recall you didn't complain when my 'so-called duty' provided you with my presence at your dinner table and my money in your pocket. Or my warm body in your bed."

"Shut up Rhett," she said ferociously. "Do you think you've cornered the market on sacrifice? Don't you think I know what losing hope is? I've lived in this marriage for five years, five years, without a crumb of real affection. I've lost hope more times than I can count. I've had my deathless love almost wear out on me ten times over and had to rekindle it holding on to something, anything, that I loved about you. I've once lived through three months by reminding myself of your HANDS, for goodness sakes. Loving is something you do, Rhett. It's work. It isn't something that stays alive without feeding it. Your love for me wore out because you stopped acting lovingly. I didn't.

She stopped, all emotion suddenly drained from her voice, her proud crest broken. "I couldn't have done indifference nearly as well as you," she whispered. "It would have been hate. And then where would we have been?"

And she spun around on her heels and left, slamming the door behind her, a sound the Butler household had not heard in many years.