Scarlett could hardly comprehend the full absurdity of her predicament as her bodily senses overwhelmed any ounce of productive thought–the damp cotton lawn clinging to the skin of her back, the clawing ache of hunger, a sickly stench, small trembling hands grappling for her own. In such severe silence, lit only by a dim lunar glow, urgency crept in like the rising tide, gradually, deceptively slow, until fully inundating her weary body.
"What is it, son?" Her breath, sharp and ragged, cut the air against his wet cheek, and how the boy shook!
"Muvver… wouldn't wake up…"
"Hush, it's alright, Mother's awake now."
The weight of him was no longer unfamiliar, for Rosemary had taken the same perch several times before, and she let the lull of his rhythmic breathing distract from the horror sure to come. Yet, she could not avoid it, for the amber-tinged light branded itself on the bed sheets through the half-closed shutters, eerily unmoving. A shadow drifted across the room as a lone cloud eclipsed the moon, and in the wash of darkness, she recalled her responsibilities (so clear and inescapable) that made her sigh.
Her thumb swiped the flesh underneath his eyes, patting the swollen cheek, briefly envious of his unencumbered youth–a feeling quickly thwarted before the savage swell of nostalgia swayed her to remember the simpler days, to mull and weep over the things beyond reach.
"Come now, dry your tears," she muttered shortly. "Let's go check on your Aunt Melly."
The boy felt like a sack of bricks as she lifted him, the weight of their fears molded together—heavy within her arms. His teary eyes against the sweat-seeped cotton clung to her like a second skin. His vice grip pressed into her, the relentlessness not far from tight-laced boning, clutching until she could barely breathe. Still, she grunted, her willful mind completely divorced from the stiff, tender limb that she dragged behind her without mindful regard. Time passed at an anguishing pace as she approached Melanie's door, concealing the fate of the two lives bundled in the den of sickness. A promise once made under unfaithful pretensions—she no longer felt obligated to Ashley, but to the precious girl herself.
Melanie who never spoke ill of her, Melanie who was more sister to her than Careen or Suellen.
Her hand gripped the knob tightly, twisting without the courage to barge through the comfort of uncertainty. In a rare moment, she pleaded with that higher being, remembering her mother's teachings.
Please, God, Melly needs strength. I have more than enough for the two of us.
"Muvver?" Those large eyes stared woefully, childishly wondering at the adult hesitation.
"Yes, yes, I know."
The door opened with a tormenting creak, croaking like a famished beast, welcoming her to the sickly room. On the bed lay a crumpled figure beneath the covers, the impression of the body so slight that in the bleak darkness, she could be convinced that there was nothing there at all. She dragged her foot forward. By the pillow—the curve of a pale cheek, a peek of brown, tangled hair. A terrifying stillness possessed the room, her eyes wavering with the dimness, the vague outlines of furniture swaying as if by an extinguished fireside, and she squinted at the unmoving flesh. Dreadful silence, prolonged and unbearable. The slightest rise of her chest, and she nearly fell to the floor.
"Scarlett?" the girl croaked.
Fast to recover, Scarlett was at the bedside at once. "Yes, it's me. How do you feel?"
A string of incoherent, disjointed words left her lips and then a moan of pain, the delicate face contorting, as if even speaking stole away at her strength.
"Don't try to speak if it pains you. Just nod—do you think the baby is coming anytime soon?"
With the tiniest tilt of her chin, the grimaced lips mouthed the confirmation, and Scarlett sunk into a weathered chair, Wade frightfully against her. Curse Doctor Meade and his poor advice! Surely, a bumpy train ride was better than this, without the looming fear of invasion—dooming the birth before it had even begun. They would perish in Atlanta if they stayed any longer, like rotting fruit flesh, the stale sweetness luring in the Yankees, making for easy prey. No, she would not let them lose so easily, to hell with what the old doctor decrees!
She jerked upwards, placing Wade upon the chair, and began to pace furiously upon the worn-out carpet. Even with those peaceful, languorous months away from the chaos, she adapted to it as if she had never left, the instinct to survive as natural as the act of breathing, and this vitality comforted the bed-ridden patient, substituting the incoherent daze of laudanum.
"Oh, we'll leave! We must! I won't sit here any longer and let them lick us—we still have time to go to Tara. You'll make it, don't worry, I'll make sure of it even if I have to drag you there myself."
The last statement should have horrified the girl, but Melanie only smiled in that gentle manner, undeceived by the roughness, knowing it masked a deeper fear, and settled her fate into those capable hands. The logistics rolled around in her head and the longer the idea settled, it became more absurd, more impossible. Northern shelling had closed the railroads, the army had confiscated any remaining horses–they were isolated, doomed to a sinking ship–and perhaps if Rhett were here he would have some way of knowing–
She froze at the thought, her shrewd mind quickly fitting the pieces together, no matter how it made her stomach churn.
"Rhett will help me, he must," she said aloud and as the words graced the air, it became cemented in stone, and any other possibility (if any, she did not bother to think) was erased from her fixated mind. She did not even consider the chance that he had already left Atlanta, that he may not be inclined to help her without payment. How she felt about him was another beast to tackle–but she did not want to think about it–survival at the forefront, with him as a mere means to an end. She would confront him herself and deal with it then, her feelings an afterthought. That boy from Charleston loomed over all, the memory of his departure fresh in her mind, but she would not think of it.
The only question remaining was his whereabouts and she was afraid she would not like the answer.
Even peering at the interior of Belle's from the doorway made her feel sick.
A long, chronic sickness, one that would remain imprinted in her mind. The long velvet curtains, the gilded mirrors, the garish wallpaper–how could such a wretched place make a frequent visitor out of Rhett Butler? She could not bear to think that it was not the interior decor that enticed him. Before she even stepped foot into the establishment, the men were already leering at her, never mind her rags or sweat or despair, and she truly wondered if all the humiliation was worth Rhett's assistance. And where could he be?
Her eyes darted across the room, seeing no sign of the man in question–perhaps he was in his hotel room? Had she come and made a fool of herself for no reason? One girl, sensing her distress, approached slowly, with a bemused smile.
"You lookin' for somethin'?"
"Is Captain Butler here?"
"Oh, he's upstairs with Belle. Need to deliver a message?"
"Yes," she clipped, pushing away the hurt as she heard the name. "Tell him Scarlett is asking for him downstairs."
A brief moment of recognition passed the girl's face, though Scarlett did not notice, only watching as she hurried urgently up the mahogany steps, hand trailing across the gold-rimmed railings. Unlike the rest of Atlanta, the house of ill repute continued to thrive, with its wall length mirrors, intricate woodwork, gaudy patterning–why, when she and other polite folk were living threadbare? Her malicious eyes watched the girls flutter from table to table, flirting outrageously, bosoms bare, not a lick of decency–why if she had no scruples and lack of morals, she could do that too, but she was a lady and–
–dear god, she was beginning to sound like her aunts. It was not long ago where she had acted similarly at Twelve Oaks, she reminded herself, and perhaps that is what drew Rhett to her. Perhaps, she reminded him of Belle Watling; how the thought horrified her!
"Scarlett! Fancy seeing you here!"
His delighted voice, so at odds with her turmoil. She turned, failing to hide the emotion on her face. The face she had bid farewell to just the day before had grown up, and she would have to be reacquainted with him again. She wished to graze his face with her hand, but he was eyeing her without the affection she had grown used to, the affection which she had taken for granted.
"Scarlett?" he repeated.
His wide, mocking smile faltered slightly and he dismissed the girl sent to fetch him with a careless wave of his hand.
"What is it?" Hands in his pockets, he approached with that lax arrogance, speaking in that unhurried drawl, as if nothing was awry with the world. But of course, nothing was ever quite wrong in his world, for what could torment him with the greenbacks lining his pocket, his guaranteed comfort to be only a badge to wear on that brutish chest.
"Something terrible must have happened for you to come here personally."
Her jaw went slack. "Something terrible? God's nightgown, Rhett, there's a war going on!"
"Oh surely not? And here I thought the cannon fire was just a turn in the weather."
"If you're going to be hateful, I might as well go back home. I don't need your help at all!"
She had forgotten how cruelly callous he could be, regressed and altered completely, fully loaded with that scathing wit, sharp tongue, careless insult. Riled up and panicked, she did not have the patience to deal with it. She turned away, but he grasped her arm and pulled her back.
"I must apologize, I haven't seen you in so long, it seems I've forgotten how to behave. I suppose this visit means you forgive me for my words upon our last meeting?"
"What words?"
He frowned, his gaze tinged with a flicker of suspicion. And then it was gone. "For someone who was quite upset, you have forgotten it very easily. I refer to my enticing offer to you on the porch of your old maiden aunt. I think of that day fondly, even if you do not, but do know that I didn't mean it truthfully, it was a joke–a crass one at that–but a joke nonetheless."
"Oh, that. It's all jokes with you, isn't it? Can't you be serious for once?"
"It depends," he replied silkily. "Now, let me repeat my question. Why did you come here, Scarlett? You must want something badly to come here of all places. What is it? Money?"
A brief, shallow study of him would have produced the impression that he cared little for her reply–how steady his voice remained, how easily he laced his words with humor. The girl she was before would have taken that assessment as fact, that his humor, his indifference was not a guise for a deeper concern, a hint at his true feelings. But, in anticipation of her answer, she recognized that searching gaze, demanding without saying, and what a fool he was for expecting her straightforward mind to possess the key to his crypt of paradoxes. Why linger in Atlanta, on the brink of tumult, when he could be lounging carelessly on foreign ports? Why bother feigning ignorance, when he knew why she was here, that it seemed he had even expected it? Tired of him circling around her like a hawk, safeguarding his feelings at the expense of her own, she put an end to the entire masquerade, meeting his obscurity with a brash frankness familiar to him in every matter except that of his heart.
"I want to go home to Tara."
"What?"
"I want you to take me to Tara. Is that not why you stayed in Atlanta? To take me away from all of this? Well, I'm not one to run, Rhett, and I want to go home. My family needs me."
He stepped back, threatened by the last person he wanted to call him out on his bluff. At once, the smile was wiped from his face. In his silence, she heard the echoes of his past propositions, Mexico, Paris, New York…
"Always so vain, my dear, to think I stayed on the sole basis of stashing you away like a gallant knight in your time of distress?"
"Really, stop changing the subject, Rhett, there is no time for it. Melly is due any day now and Mammy knows more about birthing babies than that Prissy. So, as you can see, this is a matter of urgency and I must go home. Now."
He stared at her, as if to make sense of the new person before him (and she knew it was to assess if it was worth pursuing his defenses) before sighing, a breathy concession to her spirited demands. A part of his hardened exterior splintered and beneath the facade of the heartless rogue, he let his fondness show–only a fragment of the immeasurable depths of emotion hidden from plain sight.
"I don't know. They're likely fighting in your front yard at this very moment—I'm not sure that it's the safest idea."
"I couldn't care less if there were one or a thousand Yankees at Tara. I want my parents. I want to not feel helpless anymore. I'll point a pistol at them myself, if I must, if it means I'll get back home."
"I can see that you are obstinately set on this suicidal idea."
"Suicidal? I am asking you, aren't I? If anyone can get past either army, it is you, Rhett."
Her words visibly flattered him and she smiled. Tentatively, he smiled back.
"On the contrary, it is you whom they should fear. I'd back you against any army, my dear."
Her hands clasped his own, and as he stared down, entranced by the sight, he squeezed tighter to affirm such affection. Black locks of hair hung like drapes over his telling eyes, focused as they were on their intertwined palms, and he let out a tender laugh, the wordless confession so soft and quivering, so out of place with their surroundings, lusty and bawdy.
"So you'll help me?"
He peered up to those green eyes and, to his amazement, he saw a reflection of feeling not far from his own, his reply affected by an air of disbelief.
"Yes. Against my better judgment, I'll help you."
Scarlett waited by the front gate, her fingers digging into the metal latch with such strength, every groove and contour imprinted itself into her twitching palm. The summer heat left a mantle of humidity, heavy upon her eyelids, and she slid the silk handkerchief against the slick skin of her forehead down to the slope of her throbbing neck. An hour ago he said he would come. In the wake of that promise, time tread at a terrible rate, viscous as the feverish air. If she let herself go to the vicious lifelessness of Peachtree Street, conceding to the oppressive heat, her eyes fluttered shut and she could almost hear the faint echoes of cannon fire, the distant wails of wounded men.
Before the sounds could materialize into the monstrous visual, she heard the tapping of horse hooves against the dirt road, jerking her back towards the deceptive stillness of reality. He, fitted in the white suit that had seemed so natural at Belle's, was only abrasive to the eyes against the sickly pallor of his poor excuse of a horse, or the dilapidated wagon that was dragged behind it.
"Good to see you again, nice weather we're having, don't you agree?"
"Don't joke, Rhett. I'm afraid."
He opened his mouth (to say another tasteless joke she could only assume) but realized she truly meant what she said. He observed the woman who stripped from the gaudy bright walls of the saloon, had lost all her bravado, her indomitability. Under the light of the withering street lamp, she appeared so tired, so human—a fact that, at times, he forgot about her.
"Yes, I'm afraid I am being a bit crass, aren't I?" He replied softly, and with a swift dismount, he was at her side, wrapping a sturdy arm around her back. Despite the heat, she pressed further into his side, her head naturally falling against him–a stable anchor amongst stormy waters.
"Is everything ready?"
"Yes. Melly is upstairs, Prissy will bring the luggage."
They crossed the short distance from yard gates to front porch with him shouldering most of the effort, all but dragging her body–passively, mindlessly leaning–and he forced her to meet his questioning gaze.
"Honey, you're trembling."
Perhaps it was the endearment, or the concerned drawl, but at once the dam broke, the adrenaline fleeing with the gentle breeze that brushed from her cheek against his, the stress escaping her tested body with a hoarse cry. At once, she was cocooned by soothing arms, offering the rare comfort of complete abandonment to this tide of emotion, freeing her to think about the ugly world left behind, the ugly world to which she returned, of Melly, her family. Then the thought came to her so violently–a young Ellen, virtually widowed, her young soul forever altered, retreating to the rolling hills of a Georgian plantation to escape the pain, the changing world. Such powerful feelings had no business being contained in such a body.
"I want my mother," she cried, "I want to go home to Tara."
He blotted her teary face with his handkerchief and she sniffled, feeling a soft pressure atop of her forehead that she later realized was his lips. Her arms, crushed between their two bodies, snaked their way around his torso, hugging him with such force she wondered if it communicated the depth of her feelings. She stilled, contented with her nose pressed into his neck, consoling hands upon her back, his chin perched steadily upon her head, a brief semblance of peace amongst the turbulence of the past twenty-four hours.
"We'll make it to Tara, I promise, even if I have to pull this wagon myself."
She recognized the words, the same she said to poor Melanie, and laughed lightly, the wisp of breath tickling his ear.
"It may come to that, judging by the look of that miserable creature."
Pulling back slightly, he gave her a fake look of incredulity. "Now, Scarlett, have a little more faith than that."
"It is you I trust, not the horse."
The light humor left him, his smile fading, and he peered down puzzled, his understanding of her fracturing, this newfound honesty spilling into the widening cracks.
"Do you now?"
"I wouldn't ask for your help if I didn't trust you."
"Of course," he replied, cautiously. The tenderness between them suddenly brittle and tense, she broke away and continued past the entrance, wiping away any remaining wetness lining her face.
"Melly is upstairs. She can barely walk, you'll have to carry her," she commanded and barged past the parlor doors, startling Prissy and her jittery son, who stood shakily at his mother's entrance and ran towards her open arms.
"Load the luggage into the wagon and wait there, we'll be down shortly with Mrs. Wilkes."
The girl barely voiced a response before her mistress was up the carpeted steps with the same vigor she carried herself with through Belle's. Up she went, ignoring the young boy's babbles towards the man who trailed behind her silently, who if she bothered to look, bore unsullied admiration for the weeping girl turned emphatic general.
"Unca' Rhett, why are you here?"
"I'm taking you home, son."
"Tara?" he hiccuped. Rhett hummed in reply, quiet as they approached the end of the hallway.
Scarlett turned the knob to the sick room, unchanged from when she last entered, watching the slim body squirm beneath the covers. She grabbed the oil lamp posted on the dresser and hovered the covered flame over the bed, the severity of her sickness amplified underneath the dim glow, the gaunt shadows.
"Melly, Captain Butler is here."
Her keen eyes followed Rhett as he ambled to her bedside, unmoved by the sight, making her wonder if he had ever seen such a grim condition. Skin as pale as the bed linen, her cracked lips barely a shade darker, dazed eyes fell upon the imposing man and offered a weak smile.
"Scarlett, have Prissy lay a mattress or some pillows on the bed of the wagon."
She nodded acutely, ready to relay the request, until words filtered through delirium left the girl's lips. Rhett turned to her, unphased.
"What did she say?"
"Ashley's picture, Charles' sword–she wants us to bring them."
"Get them," he said simply, and like clockwork, she yelled out to Prissy, maneuvered around him, and strained for the daguerreotype on the nightstand, the sword just steps away displayed valiantly upon the wall. She heard Melanie groan, the image of her slight against his healthy body, the mere change in position taking a toll on her strength.
"Will you be able to handle it, Melly?"
The reply came out in gasps, her face painfully twisted, until the muscles relaxed, like a thin veil passed slowly across to subdue the ailing features. Scarlett felt her stomach drop; Rhett dropped his head close to her parted mouth, feeling the soft exhales warming his skin. He sighed.
"She only passed out and perhaps that is for the best–I'm not sure she would be able to stomach the ride."
Her hand hovered over the girl, only to confirm his words, and she frowned, the bitterness returning.
"We should've gone with Aunt Pitty to Macon. I should have listened to you, instead I believed that the Yankees wouldn't make it to Atlanta. It's unfair. Melly hasn't got any strength. She only has heart."
He paused and looked at her queerly, as if the words were not her own. "Yes, that she does."
The four of them creeped back down the stairs, the singular hand lamp casting frantic shadows against the striped wallpaper, barely illuminating as she took each tenuous step. Rhett, with his cool and methodical demeanor, shut the door behind them and swung open the gate, so fluidly as if not restrained by the weight in his arms. At that moment, she trusted him more than she trusted herself. He laid the girl gently upon the fashioned mattress, cushioning her with pillows on both sides like she were a fragile heirloom, anchored by the weight of Prissy and the hefty luggage.
When she moved to place Wade beside them, he cried in protest and she clutched him back to her chest, resignedly trudging towards the front with the child in her arms. Rhett gave her another look as he helped her into the seat, lingering on the boy perched upon his mother's lap.
"Now Wade, we're going on a small adventure and I'll need a right hand man. Do you want to sit and hold the reins with me?"
She frowned as the boy nodded shyly, squirming to switch perches.
"But Rhett, you're already holding the reins, you need to focus–"
"And you, Mrs. Hamilton–" he lifted Wade easily and seated him on his leg, "–need to rest."
While her mouth opened to object, her aching limbs rejoiced in the brief respite for she had not properly sat down since her awakening, and somehow Rhett had sensed it, his head bowed down to her son's level, conspiring as if he had already won the argument. In unison, he two hands, the larger hovering over the small fist, tugged on the reins, and Wade squealed as the wagon shook from his own command, in awe of the creature hauling the weight efficiently despite its feeble appearance. Accepting her defeat (to which she was secretly grateful), she laid back against the wood as if it were any other lushly upholstered chaise lounge and stretched the sore limbs, secretly kicking off the slippers that pinched at her feet. Though, not as secret as she thought, for the man snickered and she smiled lazily, shaking her head. He was so easily amused.
In the dead silence of the night, save for the jostling wagon, the soft hush of breathing, it would have been easy to doze off, to sleep through the ride and wake up at Tara. But, Wade's innocent gaze turned to her and he demanded, like a little miniature of her:
"Muvver too," and his fingers clutched at her wrist, guiding her hand to rest upon his, and in turn, Rhett as well who said nothing, moving little, face uninformative of any true feeling. At once, she was rigid again, her hand laid woodenly upon their palms, too content in the warmth to pull away, too cautious of him to fully embrace the welcome intimacy.
It was until his thumb ran across the ridge of her knuckles, so brief as if accidental, that her hand flexed, squeezing unconsciously, and he leaped upon the opportunity, taking it into his own, her body warming as if he engulfed her entirely, ceaselessly.
"Relax, Scarlett," he muttered and she did, allowing herself to lean against him, weaving the precarious string towards him to rebuild, rediscover the remains of the man who had left Charleston so haphazardly. She squeezed his hand tighter, as if to affirm his presence. As if he wasn't really there. Only a sliver of light traced out the outline of his profile, the rest of his face waning in shadow, and bathed in the crimson light, illuminating only what she knew of him now–her imagination not strong enough to fill in the gaps of his life where she bore no witness. She knew the boy, nothing of the man; he was another monster of understanding.
There was not enough energy in her to continue pondering so her heavy eyes shifted, watching as the smoke billowed in heaps of gray and black blankets that spread across the reddening sky. The fires had infused an amber glow from Aunt Pitty's house but now they surrounded them and towered over the dark, abandoned buildings of Peachtree Street with a sickening vengeance. She wondered what they were burning that made the sky seem so much like hellfire.
They passed by the train depot, peeking through box cars towards the sea of wounded bodies, the dark cloud of night merging limbs with the earth until no distinction could be made, nurses and doctors and priests sparsely scattered like solemn graves along the mass burial. Rhett was silent. He gripped the reins with such strength that Scarlett could feel his tightened muscles from under her firm grip. Just when she felt like she could not look any longer, the wagon halted to a stop and she turned to Rhett with frightened urgency.
"Why did you stop?"
He said nothing and merely stared at the rows of the slain that spanned across yards of train track, covered and uncovered, battered and weary, rifles laid dejectedly at a pile on the sidelines. The silence, filled with their peace, was usurped to mourn the fallen army as they soaked in their tattered, blood-stained rags that they had once regarded with pride. She forced herself to look away as a boy glanced at her with harrowed eyes, and back to Rhett who looked at the sight with bitterness, his gaze mocking as it swept over the crowd.
"Take a look, Scarlett. One day you can tell your grandchildren about the defeat of the Confederate army, about how foolish men dragged the Glorious Cause in the mud, beneath their bare feet," he jeered.
Her nails dug into his skin. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to tell him to go to the devil, for the inferno surrounding them had suited him perfectly. But she recognized a semblance of regret, or somberness, in his eyes of coal, the fire rising and falling in the faint reflection. He glanced at her with a mask of indifference and Scarlett sighed. She was reminded that somewhere in there was that boy that she had grown to know, hidden by the guise of mockery and shaped by the vicious whippings of life.
Calmly, she soothed her temper, relinquishing her vice grip. "Go, Rhett. There isn't much time."
His gaze lingered on her for a second but soon the wagon began to move again, leaving behind the fallen army.
The sky remained an unsettling crimson color as they reached the road leading to Rough and Ready, the trees marred in darkness and shadow, and her body feeling limp and weary. But the comfort of Rhett had subsided many of her fears. She hadn't once released her grip, but it had loosened considerably once they escaped the confines of the city. Wade had fallen asleep and transferred back to his intended position besides Prissy, the both of them snugly cradled together beside Melanie whose faint groans marked some semblance of life.
They talked little since they left, conversation filled only with her brief directions or checking in on their three passengers, but in their droning movement, far from the ghastly image of the dying army, she observed the sickly horse, the rundown wagon, and the man who had allowed their escape to happen with much gratitude.
"Oh, Rhett," she voiced, "I'm so glad you're not in the army."
His body stiffened besides her and the usual mockery was wiped clean from his face, replaced by disgust, as if she uttered blasphemy, that Rhett Butler, the most immoral of the men she knew, would question her audacity. Her chest swelled. Why was he so offended? Since when did he care about the Cause? She released his arm and shrunk back into the seat.
There was no way to peer into his guarded mind and understand the infestation of shame that had been borne right as he boarded the train, newly disowned, fiercely optimistic. Each year it crept to the surface and every year he shoved it down, digging a deeper hole only to fill it with paid vices in hopes that the feeling would stay submerged forever. So successful he was in denying it, that he believed himself to be fine and until he laid eyes upon the dying, until he was thrown praise for his own cowardice, and he believed to be happily content with the trajectory of his life.
Up north, he knew of men shirking the Union draft, paying a poor soul as substitute–three hundred dollars for a life–and he remembered laughing hard, for those same men filled his own pockets. At nineteen, he would have thought life unfair, that such actions would only befit men such as his father. At thirty-four he laughed and swung another glass. He thought he was so smart, playing the rich man's game, but trudging through life with only the self as a cause, it ate at him slowly, miserably. When it is all over, he would have to face people, her people, and be left unable to fake the one thing money cannot buy; the urge pulsed further, and the reins fell to the floor.
Wade, still asleep, let out a long cry, like a crow. Scarlett looked to Rhett, puzzled, when she realized they were no longer moving.
"What's the matter?"
"Let the horse rest a bit," he said with a frown. He turned to her. "Are you ready to finish this crazy thing?"
Scarlett felt an uneasy feeling rile up inside of her as she stared at his face, completely darkened except for the gleams of light in his eyes, dangerous and volatile.
Her fist dug into the gathers of her skirt. "Yes, I know we can do it. We've come this far already."
He smiled now, his animalistic white teeth shining, "Not we, my dear."
The uneasiness rose to her chest and into her throat. "What do you mean? Where are you going?"
"I am going, dear girl," he swung off the side of the wagon, his boots hitting the dusty road, "to join the army."
The declaration lingered in the stale air.
"You're joking," she said, dumbfounded. "You are not that foolish. You can't leave me."
He looked up at her, mockingly, callously. "Oh, but I am serious. Do be a little more selfless. I do wonder if you've ever spared a thought from your young mind towards our noble cause?"
She jolted to her feet angrily, rocking the fragile wagon; Wade let out another mewl.
"I thought we shared the same thought about that subject. Yet, here you are leaving three women and a child alone on the side of the street just to die with the rest of them."
The thought of him, so usually forceful, so spirited, infirmed and splain along the metal railroad tracks, was near unfathomable, but war killed indiscriminately and the fever of the cause seemed to sweep over him, who had seemed so immune. If not her, one look at Melanie should have put his tirade to rest.
"Now, Scarlett, give a little credence to my idea. Seeing how you put so much trust in my capabilities, wouldn't you think the poor lads would appreciate my eleventh hour appearance?"
"Not more than how I would appreciate you taking us all the way to Tara instead of being a coward and running away halfway."
Her words seemed to chip away a bit of his paltry bravado, hitting the intended target, and his face hardened for a brief moment before he let out a false laugh, backing away from her and her unsparing jabs.
"Now, Scarlett–"
"No, I'm tired of your belittling me. Just admit it–that you're ashamed of yourself thinking of your mother, your sister, who are all probably starving at the hands of your father, while you're gallivanting across the country, proving more cowardly than all my friends, all my beaus who've died fighting. And yet you have the gall to talk of eleventh hour appearances?"
The words came out before she could think, spilling more than she ought to, but she did not back down, glaring at him, baring his own soul to him. He remained eerily silent, looking at her intently, as if looking for the girl he once knew, finding her missing. The disquiet crept underneath her skin, cloaking like a heavy blanket, sucking out the humid air, and she sat fidgeting waiting for him to say something, anything.
"I don't recall telling you any of that," he muttered finally.
"I heard it from my aunts," she rebutted. He fell quiet again and she began to worry as he retreated into himself, that she angered him to the point of leaving. Tired of them fighting, of preserving their pride, of their stubbornness, she took the first step by dismounting the wagon, and walked to him with the singular aim of earnesty.
"Rhett, all I'm asking is that you accompany us to Tara–is that so unreasonable? Afterwards, you could do anything you want, go enlist if you still feel you must," she paused. "It would be more reassuring that way, having someone to rely on. It is not the same with just Melanie or Prissy. Don't you understand?"
The man merely stared at her blankly and she felt a wave of resignation, that she had lost the fight, lost him to whatever battle he was fighting within himself. She wondered if she was playing a losing game, searching for the man that he had long left behind at nineteen, searching for something that no longer existed. Before she could voice her surrender, a wailing cry pierced the silence and she stumbled to the wagon bed, peeking over the wagon bed to find Wade, freshly awakened, his small hands grabbing the sky, towards his mother.
"Mother's here," she whispered, and lifted the boy into her arms, patting his back gently, turning back to face Rhett, who seemed deep in thought.
"Tara?" the boy questioned.
"Soon," she replied simply, staring at him, daring him to deny her request. His eyes alternated between mother and son and after a long moment, her heartbeat rapping against her chest, he cracked a smile, small but genuine.
"You compromise like a businessman, do you know that?"
She raised a brow. "Well?"
"Twice in a day, I find myself convinced by your tactics."
"Thank you," she stated emphatically. "Let's go then."
She accepted his hand helping her into the seat, and placed Wade in the middle, peering over his brown curls to watch him, his leg propped up unto the side, his hand ready to propel his body upward but hesitating midway as if the thought still needled him.
"Unca' Rhett!" the boy squealed, and his conviction was sealed, finishing the motion, and mounting swiftly beside them without the stain of reluctance. Strong arms reached for the reins, brushing briefly against her ankle, and he sat up again, tugging with more force than what was necessary. When they began to move again, she let out a long breath as the wagon disappeared into the canopied woods of Rough and Ready.
Author's Note: I've deleted it now that this is up, but I gave a brief spoiler last chapter because I knew this one would take a while to get out, though note that I changed the timeline slightly which altered some details. They leave Atlanta earlier than in the canon, so Melanie is still pregnant and consequently, they will also arrive at Tara earlier.
This was supposed to be 10k+ words, including the events when Rhett was at Tara, but then realized that it may be a bit much and it would be better to split it into two chapters so I could get this one out as soon as possible. Sorry for being a slow writer, I tend to overthink some lines and passages.