Chapter Text
Scarlett followed Rhett, clutching his handkerchief he’d just given her. She had always thought he was silly and old-fashioned, carrying around a handkerchief, but he always had one for her when she needed one. Just like he was always there for her when she needed him, but he was leaving now, and she was desperate to hold onto him like she’d never been before.
She’d been at Ashley and Melanie’s talking to Ashley just after Melanie had slipped away into death, and she had realized something she should have realized long ago. She knew she had, but she had been so caught up with delusions of a life with Ashley that she couldn’t see she was actually married to the love of her life. Rhett had always been there for her. He had always loved her, and she had been so blind.
She’d run home in the fog that had gathered in the early hours of the morning, crying for him. She was too upset, too worried she wouldn’t find him when she returned home that she didn’t even realize she was living the dream she had had time and time again. She didn’t realize that what she had been running for in her dreams was the one thing she was running home hoping to find. Rhett. She didn’t realize that it had always been Rhett. She didn’t realize that she had always loved him, she’d just been such a stupid fool to see it.
Scarlett found him in the dining room, the place where he’d spent many nights, drunk and miserable because of her which she regretted so much. She regretted a lot when it came to Rhett, and all of it was only now rushing back on her. She was so desperate to get him to see that he loved her.
“Rhett! Rhett, where are you going?”
“I’m going to Charleston,” he told her, looking up from the chair at her where he sat, the two of them nearly face to face,
“back where I belong.”
“Please!” she pleaded with him. “Please take me with you!”
“No,” he replied, standing and heading toward foyer. “I’m through with everything here.” Turning back to look at her from the dining room doorway, he said pointedly, “I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn’t something left in life of charm and grace. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Scarlett followed him, holding on tightly to the handkerchief in her hand. “No. I only know that I love you!”
“That’s your misfortune,” he told her plainly, turning to continue toward the door.
“Oh, Rhett!” she cried, watching him move further and further from her. “Rhett... Rhett!” She ran after him, catching up to him at the door where he turned back to look at her again, halfway through the threshold. “Rhett, if you go, where will I go? What will I do?”
“Frankly, my dear,” he said clearly, “I don’t give a damn.”
She was defeated. She couldn’t believe that after all this time, after she had admitted that she was in love with him, that he still walked away from her. He hadn’t said he’d wanted a divorce, that he would come around just to keep the gossip down. That hadn’t been what she’d wanted. She had wanted him. She hadn’t wanted this to be their last, she had wanted this to be their first.
Yet, he’d still walked away from her. She closed the door behind him, defeated. She didn’t know where she would go. She felt lost and helpless without him. She knew there had to be someway to win his heart back. She couldn’t think about it now, not when he’d just waked away from her, not when she’d just lost Melanie, the only true friend she had only just realized now that she really had. She couldn’t think about it when she felt her world was spiraling into darkness. She laid down on the stairs, sobbing into her arms.
But she had to think about it. She had to think of someway to bring him back. Lifting her head slowly, she remembered the time that she’d gone home after her first husband Charles had been killed. She hadn’t been in love with him, but she had still needed to figure things out, and the only place she could do that was home.
“Home! I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get him back!”
She knew that’s where she would go now; she knew that’s where she’d be able to figure out how she would get Rhett to come home and stay home with her. They would have a life together just as he’d always wanted, just as she had only just realized she had always wanted. She’d figure out a way to make their marriage real and make them both happy.
“After all, tomorrow is another day!”