A/N - now second revision... Everytime I add just a little bit more. Eventually I will get round to the other chaptes to. Happy reading and reviewing ;)

The Beginning

The night around her was unbelievable still. Surprisingly so. You would have thought that when the world came crashing down around your ears, it would have left something more than a soft hollow whisper of the words that had been the silver lining. "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn". His last words reverberated as a faint echo in the hall, sitting as a heavy burden on her slender shoulders.

How could it be, how could it be true? Her mind hurt from even the effort of trying to comprehend the harsh fact.

He had left her, left her without a backward glance; neither words of consolation nor any that held any promises for the future had left his lips as he had bid her a final adieu and ascended the staircase. The only thing he wanted was to pack up as little of his past as possible and be done with it.

Alone. She was alone again – and this time even more so than ever before.

She simply couldn't understand, she couldn't fathom how this could be happening to her.

She was still sitting on the hallway's great sweeping staircase, trying to find comfort in the soft red fabric that covered its steps, and the dark gloom that reigned there. Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving salty tracks in their wake. The sorrow she felt was overwhelming and heart breaking. She hated feeling like this, out of control, no immediate solution at hand. She needed an outlet other than tears, tears to her equalled helplessness, and she hated being helpless. Many women thrived on helplessness and used it as their most powerful weapon to control their world, but she had always detested being reduced to sitting snivelling and red eyed in a corner surrounded by hushed gentleness and cooling hands. She wanted life not helplessness – though she acknowledged that she had cause enough to surrender to the helplessness.

Confused she acknowledged two conflicting urges that flickered through her; would it be better to scream out the frustration she felt in every fibre of her body, or to give in to the fit of hysteric laughter that she felt looming deep within her at the situation in all its absurdity? Momentarily she wondered if she had lost her mind. What was there to laugh about? What would be achieved by screaming other than waking the whole house – and alerting Him to her pitiful situation. But at least both would be doing something, rather than just feeling helpless and alone.

She looked around in her great gloomy hallway, as if to see if she was really as alone as she at the moment felt. Hoping perhaps to spot some sort of proof that the rest of the world hadn't come to an immediate standstill in the wake of the destructive earthquake of fate that had once again shattered her life, making the rubbled ruins of it crash down around her. Her searching eyes found nothing to spark her hope. All that looked back at here where paintings with images of a world that no longer existed. Dusty images in gilded frames of soft golden days of youth, which not even the flickering candlelight, could bring back to life, no great consolation. How she wished that the old panting of her Grand Mama was hanging here above her. Even the stern, cold, condescending gaze of the grand old lady would be preferable to the bleak nothingness.

She – the strong Scarlett O'Hara – who hadn't flinched at what life had previously thrown at her, was completely at her wits end. Neither war, Yankees or reconstruction had been able to lick her, but it seemed that she finally had reached her breaking point.

Her life had been a long fight going back as far as she could remember; her sole focus to gain riches and security, thinking that happiness would come skipping along when those things were in place. She had held on to her concept of a perfect life so long that she had not realised that what she put the highest price on, where naught but illusions. She had fought for this life that she had thought she wanted, fought with all she had to fight with, without realising from where she had derived the strength to keep fighting. She had dismissed loneliness as something to be suffered only temporarily, resorted to drinking to keep it at bay while she waited for it to pass. Believing that at some point in her life, when her goals had been obtained – with a flick of a wand all would fall into place and she would feel happy and secure. Her focus had at all times been set on that elusive goal of the future. She had always looked elsewhere for her happiness and assurance, never pausing to evaluate what she had already obtained and where her single minded path was really taking her. Funny how someone as level-headed as herself, had still been so utterly convinced that an outside force would sort out her life for her. Instead the opposite had happened, largely due to the same narrow-mindedness.

Slowly but surely every cornerstone that had formed the foundation of life as she knew it had been meticulously removed, dissolved into nothingness, making the whole construction unstable, until it had no longer been able to support what was on the top. And now it had all crumbled. Leaving her alone in the broken down remains, a sole survivor.

First her beautiful baby girl had been taken away from her, in one of faiths wicked twists. Like a waft of smoke, her life had been short and fragile, ended by an untimely wave of the unseen puppeteer's hand. And that even at a point in time where she Scarlett had finally had her first taste at what motherly love could feel like. A great treasure had for a second been within her reach, but then just as quickly it had been snatched away before she had time to realise what it was. The unborn child that she had lost had awakened something in her. It was the first small buds of unselfish love for another being and the actual feeling of wanting to be a mother. Something that up till then had been as foreign to her as the Latin language. She had then wanted to throw this new found love at all her other children, but especially her pretty blued eyed girl, in whom she could recognise more of herself than in her older children. The girl she had always appreciated because of her sweet childish beauty, she now saw something else in. But she too had been taken away from her, just like the unborn baby whose face she would never even get to see.

After the loss of her precious Bonnie Blue the resolve to be kinder to Wade and Ella had faded into the back of her mind again. Erased by the bitter and angry words that had been exchanged then between her and her husband. Instead of the comfort she had actually desperately sought but either not known how to ask for or been to scared of rejection to seek, she had turned to him with blame and resentment, banishing him further from her than ever before. That loss alone was heartbreaking.

Secondly, her guardian angel in the human form of Melanie Wilkes had just this night been taken from her. The irony being that this had happened at the exact moment in time where she actually had realised that in Melanie, she had, what perhaps was her only true friend. In a flash of realisation she saw that Melanie hadn't been the cause of all her life's misery; and her presence, which Scarlett had up till then dismissed as nothing but a bothersome burden to be endured, had actually been a precious friendship. Melanie had been an angelically good woman, who had, albeit with a strength very different from Scarlett's own, fought Scarlett's battles along with her for more than a decade. Even staying unwaveringly faithful by her side when so many others had left in the face of malicious rumours. On her deathbed she had provided Scarlett with the key to insight and perhaps even to her own heart. For her last words had been about Scarlett's husband, a plea for Scarlett to take care of him as he loved her dearly. Something Scarlett for the many years of their marriage had failed to notice or at least failed to believe in, but honest Melly she knew spoke always and only the truth, and thus her words were to be believed. And this had pulled a veil from Scarlett's eyes.

That loss had been all the more devastating for this realisation. Like a blind person who had for a second been given the gift of sight, only to be blindfolded, which would make the blindness harder to bear as now she had a definite picture of what her world could look like.

Two major events that had undermined the already fragile foundation of her life even more.

And now this last thing. Bad things it seemed did not happen in pairs but rather came in an unending stream. It was a devastating blow, yet too great to fathom. On this very same evening when she had lost her new found friend and she had finally realised where her heart really lay, her husband had decided that enough was enough. No amount of reasoning, pleading, begging or screaming was going to change that. He had left her high and dry on these very steps that were now serving as her resting place. It tore at her heart. She hated her blindness, hated her quest for determined nothingness and cursed herself for not being able to see the truth. Yet part of her also wanted to put the blame on him, as it was too heavy to carry on her own. However as he had left, this did not bring her the needed comfort. Casting blame on a shadow or a memory did not bring any satisfaction.

So yes she was at her wits end, not seeing a clear path to go by. In all her previous troubles, there had always been an overall easily definable goal – whether it be food or money and the security and social standing the latter brought with them. It had been something concrete to focus her energy and determination on. Enabling her to succeed where others had failed. Using nothing but sheer will power, relying solely on her own resourcefulness. But now, she felt utterly lost? No matter how much dedicated determination she had put into convincing Rhett of her need for him to stay it had not been enough.

She had more than a vague idea of her goal. Though what the goal actually implied was still a bit fussy for her. But she knew what she wanted, and after all that was the most important, for without a goal, how would she be able to direct her effort.

After living year after year with a husband she had married for money, she had realised that she loved him and couldn't live without him. This gloomy night that had ripped (what she now realised was) her dearest friend from her, had brought the realisation that there were and always had been another person in her world that "had her back", and had invisibly helped her in her struggles, Rhett Butler. For Rhett Butler had throughout all of the years since her sixteenth, been a somewhat permanent fixture in her life. For the first many years of their acquaintance "only" as a friend, but later on, at least in the eyes of the world, as a more official protector in the form of a husband. He had been her best friend and at the same time her worst enemy, sometimes kind but also endlessly teasing and tormenting her, most of the time treating her as if she was of little consequence to him.

Now it seemed strange to her that she had never realised this before, as it was now crystal clear to her, she loved him and right in this moment she felt like she would never be able to smile at life again until he was at her side once more. True to her nature she had not investigated the root or questioned the beginning of this love to any great extent. She just accepted it as the most natural thing in the world.

Truth be told, Scarlett O'Hara had never been blessed with much interest in soul searching - she never had had the time nor any pressing need to delve into the inner workings of the human soul. Born as a pampered planters princess the early years of her life had been spent in a fluffy happy bobble where her every need had been attended to by a multitude of slave servants, and all her wishes had been granted with a small flick of a finger or perhaps a dip into her fathers wallet. A life which hadn't required much consideration to other people, despite her mother's best effort to imprint the behaviour and mind set of a true lady on her. An effort that had provided her with a polished varnish but hadn't made any real impact on her in many other ways. Later on the war had forced her to grow up almost over night, ripping her well know world apart, taking away the people she had cared for the most, leaving no time for self discovery. Most of her childhood friends and beaus had been killed in the war, and later on her mother and subsequently her father had died as well. This had left her to deal with the post war struggles on her own, fighting hunger and the tide of rules and regulation in the aftermath of the war, which had meant pushing all thoughts for anything else to a sealed corner of her mind, as it would otherwise threaten to destroy her. This fight was not only on her own behalf but also for the remaining family, a few faithful servants and Melanie Wilkes and Ashley.

Ashley…. Her dream prince, and life long love, who she tonight had realised where only a well preserved figment of her imagination. For most of her adult life Scarlett had cared for two things enough money to say "bugger all" to the rest of the world, and Ashley to accompany her on that journey. Ashley, who had come home from a grand tour of Europe the summer after she had turned fourteen, looking like something out of one of the fairytales that her mother had read out loud on calm evenings in her childhood, where she and her sisters had snuggled up in the comfortable armchairs in her mothers study. He had come up to her on his magnificent horse, blond hair gleaming in the sun, suddenly seeming grown up and unattainable, and easily outshining all the less polished boys of the county which showered her with compliments. Ashley on the other hand had always been somewhat aloof, never being openly smitten with her as her many other beaus, and for this she had loved him. Loved his gentlemanly nature, his worldly wisdom (even his tendency to be enthralled in a world created by words and pages had at the time seemed charming) in addition to this his dashing good looks; in short she loved everything about him, and thus failed to notice that he was just a human being like everybody else with strength and weaknesses. She realised now that, perhaps she had never really known him, or indeed cared to get to know him. She had a finely carved image of him in her mind, which she held close to her heart and used as a deflector for all the disappointments and sadness that had been a constant part of life during the war and in the first hard years after it had ended. Even when life had become easier she still couldn't afford to dismiss this idea of her true love, perhaps unknowingly scared if the loss of another childhood dream would break her, and thus she had held onto it with dear life.

She now understood or at least tried to understand how much the stubborn blindness had cost her. Because in her blindness she had failed to notice that behind her husbands often malicious ways there had been hidden an al consuming love for her, a love that Ashley could never have mustered had he known her the way Rhett did. In fact truth be told, Ashley never really loved her, at least not the real her, just as she had not loved the real him, he had loved his Melanie, and only lusted for her. Or perhaps not even that… perhaps that had been yet another figment of her imagination? Right now she didn't care; she was too consumed with the encompassing sadness of knowing that Rhett had left her. A flickering understanding dawned on her that had she ever understood Ashley she could never have loved him, and had she ever bothered to understand Rhett she would never have lost him, with that not so comforting thought she fell asleep - weary to the bone by the confrontation with all the emotions which had been brought to the surface within the last couple of hours. She was still huddled on the steps of the staircase, that had played such a major part, in shaping her life over the past couple of years, her hooped skirt flowing around her.