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softquietsteadylove · 2 months

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official spicy time for the runaway bride AU pleaseee <3

Gil closed the door behind him as he came back into the cabin. He was done washing up after what was a harrowing day for them, and that was keeping in mind that they had already experienced plenty before now.

He had given Thena a foot bath as soon as they got back, and she had all but dozed off then already. It would probably be for the best if she was dead asleep by now.

He couldn't imagine what it must have felt like for her. She had been faced with her past in her own home twice now. Had they dragged her off the porch? Did they break in the door and bruise her ivory skin like monsters? The thought made his stomach turn.

Gil sighed, seeing Thena lying on her side in their bed.

There had been a time when he hadn't wanted to lie with her. He wanted her to remain a proper lady, with him on a straw bed so he could respect her independence (newfound and fragile in the beginning). Now, they cuddled every night. Well, now they did more.

It was still a lie that they were married. No one had officiated anything and her father hadn't approved any bans. But they lived together, for more than a year now, they laid together, their hands were on each other most nights, now.

He certainly felt that if he had a wife, surely it was Thena.

He walked over to the bed, no shirt, just his cotton trousers rolled up to his knees. He tossed the cotton he used for a towel over one of the bed posts. He thought of the proper bath room he had wanted to build. Now, it was possible that the best thing to do was leave their home all together.

Thena rolled over. She was awake.

"Hey," he whispered, leaning over to kiss her forehead. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

She said nothing, reaching up with her hands to bring his lips to hers. He granted her request, always happy to offer a sweet kiss. She asked for more, though.

Gil braced himself on the bed, hands on either side of her as she kissed him deeper, her tongue venturing further. As tired as he was, he felt himself ache for her. He groaned.

Thena rose in the bed to sit up. Her shoulders were bare. She kept the blanket pinned under her arms around her. "Gil, lie down."

His hair stood on end. He couldn't be sure, but he could feel something in the air. Thena made room for him in the bed, still holding the sheets around her. The fire in the hearth was waning but the light and deep shadows bent and stretched over her bare skin.

Once he was in the bed, Thena moved on top of him. It wasn't unheard of for her to position herself this way. It was easy for them to please each other in this position. But Gil blinked as she sat up, letting the sheets fall around her. His eyes travelled around the globes of her breasts, down between them and over her pale stomach.

She did nothing to stop his eyes from roaming her body. She did eventually tip his mouth closed and his chin back up to look in her eyes. When she had his attention again, she leaned in for another kiss.

His hands slid over her. His palms glided over her soft, warm back. He had never touched her like this--or this much of her. He would become addicted. He was already a little too excited about it.

But Thena moved deftly, grasping a handful of him and pulling him into the open air, even holding him upright in her palm. "Gil, I do not know what the future holds."

He held his breath as she looked at him. She moved smoothly, adjusting her hips so she could take him into her. They both moaned as first contact was made.

"But I don't want to wake up tomorrow and know I have never truly made love with you."

Gil grunted as she slid herself the rest of the way down onto him. Her soft bum met his pelvic bone and he grasped her hips to keep her still for a moment. He looked up at her, trying to grasp the expression on her face. "Thena, a-are you okay?"

She wiggled some on top of him. She had no idea the enticing effect her bouncing breasts had on him. But she took in a breath, dignifying herself the way a princess would. "It is far more pleasurable than horse riding."

Something about that, and the way she was so perfectly poised atop him, made something connect in his mind for the first time. He lifted his hips, enjoying and admiring the way her jaw dropped and her lips uttered a soft moan. He puffed through his nose.

Thena moaned again as he lifted his hips higher. She leaned forward, bracing herself against the headboard of the bed. Her unbound breasts swung into his view.

Gil happily took one into his mouth. Thena squeaked, her spine snapping, but he dragged his teeth along until the nipple left his possession by force. He looked up at her. She blushed.

Gil moved more rhythmically. He thrust up into her, in a way he had only done in his dreams. Even Thena's palm on a lazy morning didn't compare to this. He kept her leaning forward, looming over him in all her glory.

Thena made a sound for every thrust. Her hips began moving to match him, instinctively, her needs matching his. Her knees dug harder into the bed, spreading her legs more to let him go deeper. He hit the frontmost walls of her, and she mewled as if enjoying a good stretch in the morning.

"That's it."

Thena bit her lip as he started moving at his newer angle. She picked her head up, her blonde hair swinging around her with their movements. Her chest flushed pink and a sheen of sweat glistened on her skin.

Gil let his eyes wander again, travelling over Thena's body--the body of an absolute siren, apparently. Watching their connection, their hips meeting, her legs spread to either side of his drove him in a way he had never experienced before.

Thena cleared her throat. "This is not some brothel display."

He chuckled, directing his eyes back up to his love's. His moved his hands from just above her buttocks to running over her back, tapping his fingers where he felt her ribs. "Sorry, sweetheart."

Thena had to crane her neck to do it, but they kissed again, tongues nearly meeting before their lips did. He moved more feverishly than ever, and her voice rose in pitch. "Gil!"

He was nearing his end. His nethers tightened and he didn't think he was being hopeful and imagining hers doing the same. He took one of her hands from supporting her weight, moving it down. Her brow furrowed, her eyes shut and focused on finding the conclusion they had only begun achieving for her recently.

"Here," he whispered, guiding her hand to where they were joined. "Feel it?"

She bit her lip again. But he trusted her to feel around her own body better than he could. It did hinder his view somewhat, but there was a completely different pleasure to watching her do this for herself.

"It's okay, that's it," he encouraged. Her fingers began making a circular motion, assuring him that she had found what worked for her. He picked up his pace again. "I'm close."

"Close," she either asked or repeated, it was indecipherable. Her hand moved faster, the flush in her skin spreading quickly. "Gil, I-I-I-!"

Thena came quickly. She could teeter on the edge for some time but when she came, it was with her whole body. He let her bear down on him, all her weight moving to her hips grinding against his.

He groaned as he released not seconds later. It was an easy thing to do, with Thena's warmth encompassing and encouraging him. She made a purring sound as she felt him shooting into her, pump by pump. Exhaustion had no meaning to the organ dominating his actions currently.

They took time to catch their breath, the day and what had just taken place catching up with them. Thena's occupied hand had moved to using him as a support, right in the middle of his chest, the heel of her palm pressing into his sternum.

She whimpered as he moved her off of him and onto her side. He grasped blindly for the towel he had abandoned, moving it between her legs. She grumbled in quiet protest of it but he still thought she didn't quite know that such things did not simply dissolve after they were done.

He rolled over her somewhat, kissing her cheeks and lips more gently than they had been doing. "You okay?"

"Hm," she mused, although she sounded awfully contented. Her hands pawed at his chest, as they liked to do when she was satisfied. "Quite. You?"

He liked it when her lovely and eloquent speech left her for more singular statements. He kissed her again. Her tongue chased him but even if she could endure more tonight, he could not (deeply unfortunate). "I love you, Thena."

Her eyes opened, and the lovely flush in her cheeks deepened to a proper blush. She bent her head, nuzzling it against his neck. "I love you, too."

He smiled to himself, letting her curl into him as she liked. He was happy to hold his wife - in not so many words - as she desired. There was still the matter of what they would do. He could ask her how she felt about finding a spot for themselves in the village. But that could wait.

He had to find some way to get a ring, first.

#Thenamesh Runaway Bride AU #pt 2 #Thenamesh 18+#it's finally time for these two #I think Thena likes taking control for herself #it's a new avenue for her to explore #and she wants to be proactive about it #so she looks at Gil and says lie down cause I'm gonna fuck your brains out #I'm only somewhat kidding #Thena has been thinking about this for some time #ever since they've started doing things of this sort #eventually she's like wait I can...oh #so she says okay #and I mean once the sun rises again she's like shit I'm still naked #she remembers last night #and how amazing it was #and also how Gil has seen...a lot more of her than she planned #she remains cuddled up to him #and when he moves she keeps the sheets covering her #he on the other hand has no shyness and gets out of bed #swingin' around...as it were #Thena averts her eyes #he just chuckles and says that she'll have to get used to it #but he does put on trousers because she's still a lady #and he retrieves her night dress for her #which she had wiggled out of and thrown aside the night before #also I don't think people wore rings in I dunno let's say the 1600s-ish but whatever

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britishsass · 14 days

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I love giving myself deadlines because then I end up scrambling to finish things two days beforehand and then realize that honestly, it's entirely my own fault for getting distracted and making another au again

#this is brought to you by: The bit i have written for Something Missing that's actually ready-ish #is the chapter AFTER the one i'm supposed to be writing #so. Be warned. Chapter after this one? emotions are happening. i think.#the owl posts #the owl complains #also. yeah it was the werething au. that's the working title for it and it's sticking around for now #walter has for some reason decided to learn to crochet right before i did and just. completely coincidental we both did that #i swear it actually is this time /gen #my mom got the crochet kit and we then went to the store to see what other ones there were sooo #anyway. i'm gonna go play mobile games and procrastinate #while my laptop charges

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bunn-iiii · 3 months

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so many things happening in my life in the next couple months and it feels like my life is turning around compared to how I felt this time last year which was complete and utter dread and burn out in every sense of the word

#ME WHEN I GIVE MYSELF MORE SPACE AND TIME TO HEAL AND BE OKAY AFTER A SCHOOL YEAR #there are several factors as to why i don't feel like the human-ish equivalent of the swamp monster #mostly though it's because I'm going into homeschooling so the overwhelming fear of the next school year and all the expectations and #running around and will i get a good teacher and do i have to change my schedule and oh god am i gonna be able to get my 504 in check and #are my teachers even going to follow it and all of that isn't present #I'm gonna meet my teacher here soon and i she's a special ed teacher and i won't have to run between classes #or worry about my principal suddenly making a rule that we can't go to the bathrooms during class hours #and everything else that comes with going to school i did #and also the reason i don't feel like shit is i haven't done much this summer!!! literally everything was fighting for my time and attention #last summer and i felt like i barely had a moment to breathe #one moment I'm in Tennessee with my aunt and the next I'm back in Oklahoma running a convention #and then less than a week later I'm at counselor in training camp for two weeks (would've been three but i got sick due to overworking #myself while at the camp)#and then as soon as all of that was done i had only about a week before school started again #this year i only went to one convention instead of working at one and I'm going to two camps #one was at the start which was a day camp that i work at #and the second one is like next weekend (not this one but the next) and it's an overnight but again only a weekend instead of two weeks #and I'm a camper at that second camp since it's meant for lgbtq+ teens :3 #and that's it!!!!#then i have school and in October i have the dan and phil terrible influence tour in Colorado #which means i get to visit my aunt and uncle and my cousin #and i have my nurse gerard costume for halloween #and then at the end of January i have my first furry convention which I'm making a fursuit for currently!!!!!

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thepatchycat · 9 months

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hellooo! 👋

i hope it as okay to tag you in the WIP game!!! 😅😅 you have so many cool projects underway!!

I would love to hear more about your Defiance series! Side stories and spin offs?! What a world you must be creating! 🤩

thanks and have a lovely day !!☀️

Certainly! :D I don't always respond to tag games, but I do always appreciate being tagged in them. This one especially makes for a nice excuse to ramble about projects, and I'm delighted to talk about Defiance~

I'm pretty sure Defiance (the main fic) is the second fanfiction I've ever worked on in earnest and also my first and only longfic (not counting some sort of journal thing for Pokemon X I think I started many years ago, as I quickly lost interest in that project; otherwise, I hadn't really tried my hand at writing fic until 2020, despite reading it for much longer). Back in early 2021, with far too much time on my hands and having recently finished binge-watching all of The Clone Wars TV show, I felt very strongly that Fives needed to live and everyone deserved a happier ending, so I started planning a fix-it (actually the idea may have begun cooking back even before I finished the show, but February 2021 is apparently when I created the first doc).

It, uh, spiraled a little.

The planning/notes document is currently sitting at 102 pages (~46k words) of loose outline, worldbuilding notes, character notes, media notes, etc. The fic document itself is at 127 pages (~49k words) of stuff ranging from rough outline to fully written chapters and outtakes. There is also a Sheets file with timelines so I can track who is where, and when. The Sidestories doc is for ideas that would probably take place during Defiance but not be part of the more central plot, like bonus side chapters, and the Spin-offs doc is for other fic ideas that would take place in the same universe—some of which have graduated to their own documents. Though I've not been making consistent progress in the actual writing and have a very long way to go, I am lost in this sauce.

Anyway, the general plot of Defiance is as follows: unbeknownst to Palpatine and the general public, a timely intervention saves Fives' life. This allows him to actually explain himself to the Jedi, who along with the clones investigate the chips further and work behind the scenes to prevent Order 66 from happening while trying to figure out how to take down who's behind it. Critically, despite their suspicions they do not have hard evidence of Palpatine's involvement, so most events parallel canon up through ROTS with the investigation/preparation taking place discreetly, until the train hops off the rails to avoid sailing off the cliff.

If you'd like a sneak peak snippet, here's the first page or so of the main fic below the cut!

Something is wrong. The Force is muddled with a constant and indistinct unease, as it has been for years now—moreso on Coruscant than anywhere else, to Shaak Ti's perceptions. Its warnings are difficult to discern with any specificity. Even so, it murmurs them now. And Shaak possesses her own instincts, enhanced by the Force but extant outside her connection to it; these, too, whisper to her that something is wrong, as she watches Knight Skywalker leave the Jedi Temple conference room to find Captain Rex and investigate the situation with Fives. They are the best fit to track him down and the most likely to confront the rogue clone without further violence. Shaak warned Skywalker that Fives has been acting differently without his chip, that he may not be the man they knew—though she herself is reluctant to believe it—and the Knight and Captain are plenty capable of handling themselves. They will be all right. Still, something is wrong in a way she cannot yet define, and so Shaak Ti decides to join the hunt. Since the Jedi have not been asked to search for Fives, she does not contact the Coruscant Guard when she leaves the Temple. Instead she steps out of the building, pulls up the hood of her cloak, and makes for one of the speeder bikes kept at the Temple for general use. It whirs to life under her hands, and she rides to the nearest transportation portal leading down into the undercity. As she descends, passing speeders of all makes and sizes, Shaak Ti considers what she knows. She is well aware of her own struggles in becoming emotionally attached to the clones; her role on Kamino requires her to balance her care for them as people with the need to defend the galaxy. But many of them, such as Domino Squad, inevitably leave an impression. She watched Echo and Fives grow from bickering cadets to determined protectors, some of the best of their brothers. Her belief in their character during their final tests had not been misplaced. And yet, over these past few days Fives repeatedly defied the Kaminoan doctors, removed his chip, claimed something about a conspiracy, then attacked the Chancellor and fled. Shaak cannot deny these facts, and she must not allow personal feelings to cloud the truth. Then there are the Kaminoans. Shaak clashes frequently with their attitudes toward the clones, the way they view them as products rather than sentients. Nala Se’s arguments for terminating Tup and assurance that the chips are not a problem fall in line with her position as a manufacturer. And Shaak is well aware that the Kaminoans have not shared all of their secrets with her, as she is not owed them. But the medical scientist's resistance had been… spirited. None of this paints a clear picture. As they concluded in the meeting back at the Temple, the Jedi need more information. The familiar sound of a military engine hums past, and Shaak turns her head to watch a pair of gunships heading down the portal through one of the military lanes. She swerves out of the civilian traffic and dives after them, further and further below the surface of the city.

#Thanks for asking! :D #I'm really excited about this 'verse even though it's quite far from getting published #I want to finish at least the first draft of the whole thing before starting to post but that's gonna take quite some time #It'll probably be somewhere between 35 and 50 chapters #Out of which I have...maybe 10-ish written (and around 20 more vaguely outlined). So. Long way to go.#But by golly we're gonna get there!#Patchy Babbles #Patchy Writes #Tag Games

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queenlucythevaliant · 1 year

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A Liturgy of Surviving

Scarlett always wanted to be like her mother, and maybe in another world she could have been. If the war never happened, she could have grown softer instead of sharper. She could have curbed her temper, married well, and been received in respectable homes all her days. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the war, Scarlett O’Hara could have lived out her days in genteel artifice, just like Ellen before her.

Maybe. Maybe not. If you asked her, Scarlett would say that the question was irrelevant. “God’s nightgown!” she would exclaim. “Don’t ask me what could have been. The war happened and that’s that.”

I won’t think about that now.

The day after Scarlett’s world ended, she swore an oath that she would never be hungry again.

She woke in pain. Her muscles ached and her joints creaked. She was nineteen, but she felt like she had a hundred years weighing her body down. Morning light slanted through the window and her head ached with the moonshine liquor that she’d downed the night before. From another room, she heard an infant crying.

She passed through the dining room without eating, pausing only briefly beside her grief-ravaged father. She found Pork on the porch shelling nuts. The sun was up. Scarlett O'Hara drew herself tall and began to marshal her troops.

Melly and her sisters were still infirm, so they were useless for now. Mammy could tend them, and Pork and Prissy were to round up the livestock. Dilcey to Macintosh, herself to Twelve Oaks; perhaps they’d find food. Yes, I know. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now get going.

Those days as the war staggered to its end were some of the longest of her life. In between them, Scarlett would collapse into bed and rub the welts on her feet with clumsy fingers. Sometimes she’d picture Ellen and all her gentle admonitions to kindness and refinement, and she’d say aloud to the walls, “What happened to me? What am I doing?”

She didn’t dwell on the question, but somehow, she always knew the answer. “I’m doing what I must,” she would answer herself. “I’m surviving.”

People didn’t talk back to Scarlett anymore. They were all afraid of her sharp tongue, of the new person who walked in her body. This Scarlett bullied and cajoled until everyone obeyed her, and inevitably her orders were to work. She was all edges; any softness that she’d once possessed had been sanded away splitting rails and picking cotton. Good, she thought. Let them fear me, if it keeps us all standing.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Scarlett was sixteen when the war began: sixteen in green muslin, fearless and unencumbered. She had her mother’s slim waist and her father’s square jaw, but her clear green eyes were her own.

She was sixteen when she married Charles Hamilton and lost him, seventeen when she bore his child and draped herself in black crepe. She got Melly and Wade in the bargain, but she didn’t want either of them. She wanted Ashley. She wanted to dance! She wanted, she wanted. She wanted Scarlett O’Hara back.

At nineteen years old, Scarlett survived the destruction of her whole world. She could have cried for the loss of her girlhood, for her old self long gone with the soft hands and dancing slippers, but what good would it have done? Curled up in her childhood bed at Tara, Scarlett didn’t cry. Instead, she folded in on herself, knees tucked up to her chest, and tried not to feel her muscles aching. She would have to get up again tomorrow, no matter how badly her shoulders still hurt.

She had strong shoulders, Scarlett O’Hara. That was maybe the most important thing about her. At any time, at any age, her shoulders could bear whatever they were given. “I’m surviving,” she would say each morning when she rose. A stranger’s freckled face greeted her in the mirror, but Scarlett only squared her small thin shoulders, breathed in, took one step and then another.

Tomorrow, when I can stand it.

Calluses form like this: repeated pressure or friction is applied to the skin, most often of the hand or the foot. The outer layer, which is made of dead cells, begins to be retained rather than flaking off normally. The dead cells accumulate, forming hard layers sometimes hundreds of cells thick.

They form like this: you use your skin. The shell of hardness around it slowly thickens.

I can stand anything now.

The day after Rhett left, Scarlett packed up Wade and Ella and she once again drove the long road home to Tara. She pushed her way past Suellen at the threshold, exchanged brief pleasantries with Will, and then fell into her old bed as she’d done so many times before.

The next morning found Scarlett basking in the slanting yellow light that struck the porch from the east. Her eyes were fixed on the fields beyond and there was a devilish look on her face.

When Rhett came back—and he would come back, he had promised he would—he would find her here at Tara, where she was strongest. “He liked when I was strong,” Scarlett said to herself. That was something she’d always known, for all that she’d been blind to the true dimensions of it.

Day after day, Scarlett rose and moved through Tara’s halls. She ate her breakfasts in the place where she’d faced down the Yankee army, sorted through figures where she’d once debated with Melanie over whether they ought to risk sending Pork out on the horse to look for food. Twenty times a day, she walked past the place at the base of the stairs where she’d shot her deserter dead. Here, in these halls, she had made her greatest stands.

She’d stood more rigidly then, threadbare and starving and uncertain. She’d come to the end of herself, only to find that she had wells of strength hidden deeper than she knew. Her hands were calloused and dirty. What else could she do?

I’ll never be hungry again.

It’s easy to view Scarlett as hard and amoral. Even those closest to her would not have contested that characterization. Perhaps Melly would have argued, but then, Melly always saw the good in everyone. Scarlett killed and she stole and she schemed and she cheated, and she did it all in cold blood. What a selfish, conniving bitch, you might say.

It’s easy to forget Scarlett’s compassion. When she beat that poor horse to keep it trudging the long road home to Tara, she regretted hurting a tired animal. Her concern for Melanie, her friendship for Will Benteen, her joy when Rhett made her laugh: these were all true and genuine.

Didn’t Scarlett love her father and mother? Didn’t she grieve to see her friends and neighbors ruined by war? Scarlett O’Hara risked her life to save Charlie’s sword for Wade to inherit, and she built her mills for him and Ella both.

None of this negates the ruthless things she did in the name of survival, but it does begin to explain them. Scarlett made herself hard when hard was what she needed to be. She determined to live without reservation, without softness and with little kindness. Rhett called her cruel, and maybe he was right. But Melly also called her sacrificial and devoted, and maybe she was right too.

No, nor any of my kin.

On that road home to Tara, Scarlett once said, “If the horse is dead, I will curse God and die too.” Someone in the Bible had done just that—cursed God and died. Scarlett remembered feeling like that person, a despair of Biblical magnitude.

But the horse was alive, and so Scarlett did not die. Later, she thanked God that her knees still had the strength to support her, that her neck was still strong enough to hold her head high. Scarlett was not Job’s wife, nor even Job himself. She was Rahab, who escaped the destruction of Jericho, who saved her whole household and survived.

“What a fast trick,” said the Old Guard when she stole Frank Kennedy away from Suellen. No, Scarlett could never be Job. She was Jacob, the trickster and supplanter.

Just a few more days for to tote the weary load.

Scarlett was easily provoked into courage; that was one of the first things that Rhett learned about her. A few insults, a pointed comment, and Scarlett lifted her chin and flounced off to prove just how brave she could be. She shed her crepe years early, and to Halifax with anyone who objected.

Rhett did that same thing to her on the awful day that Atlanta burned. He insulted her and laughed at her, and when Scarlett spat, “I’m not afraid,” it was true. Her hands, which had moments ago been shaking too badly to hold anything, were steady now, and anger had crowded all the fear out of her voice.

Rhett kept needling her all the way out of the city, until they reached the Rough and Ready where he left her. The banter kept her sharp. As long as her eyes were flashing in indignation, she hardly noticed the fire.

Even after Rhett left, his jabs stayed with her. “What would Rhett say if he knew I couldn’t do this?” spurred her back into action more times than she would ever admit. It was a petty kind of courage, and it felt smaller than the great, soaring motivation that came with thoughts of Tara, of the O’Hara name and Irish pride and red earth, but sometimes petty courage was enough to bridge the gap between strength and exhaustion.

He gave her something to hold onto, something to ground her, and even Rhett only halfway understood what that meant. I want you at your best, he never told her, but he pulled her into it by taffeta ribbons and witticisms. As the years rolled by, she rose to meet him. They swapped sharp words and insults, him always claiming to know her and her shouting, “You don’t know half!”

One day on the jostling ride out to her mills, Scarlett told Rhett about the fire that the Yankees set in Tara’s kitchen. “I’m not afraid of fire anymore,” she declared with something like pride, and Rhett remembered goading her past the flames the night Atlanta burned. “I beat it out with my skirts, and then Melly had to beat me out when my back caught,” she went on. “Now I’m not afraid of anything but hunger.”

I don’t want you to fear anything in all the world, Rhett didn’t say. Once they were married, he laughed at her appetite and teased her, “Don’t scrape the plate, Scarlett. I’m sure there’s more in the kitchen.”

No matter, ‘twill never be light.

After the war, Rhett had his millions. Ashley had his honor. Melly had the Association for the Beatification of the Graves of Our Glorious Dead. Scarlett held a ball of red clay in her fist and whispered, “I have this.”

Her father built Tara from nothing and he loved those acres like they could love him back. He had come to Georgia a poor immigrant boy and he had won that red earth. Whatever Gerald could do, his daughter could do too: of this she was certain. This land, this firm red clay on which she stood, was both her battlefield and her prize; her birthright and her hallowed ground. She gripped it tight with all the passion of a lover. She longed for its rolling fields on cold nights in Atlanta, sleeping beside Frank Kennedy.

“Yes, I have this,” and she let the dirt run between her fingers and lodge beneath her nails. Melly had Ashley and Ashley his senseless honor. Scarlett had Tara.

I’ve still got this.

When she rode out in her buggy with her lap robe pulled up to her bosom, Scarlett heard how people whispered. She felt indignant about it the first time, and the second time she worried what Ellen would have thought. The third time, she decided not to care.

She still complained to Rhett about the whispering as he was holding the reins one afternoon. He didn’t laugh at her, just looked sideways from the road with his dark eyes and nodded like he understood. “Be different and be damned!” Rhett said, and his tone was like a soldier who’d heard the bugle. It was so strange, how Scarlett could tell him all the worst things about her and he would always answer back like they were medals instead of secret shames.

Most of the city was in mourning, but Scarlett wore colors. She pilfered the store’s inventory in search of bright green, washed and mended her curtain dress as many times as it would stand, and when the money came she wore gowns of emerald, blush, indigo, and scarlet. Let them stare, she thought. See if I care.

At twenty-two, Scarlett rode up to Pittypat’s in the evenings, long after Frank had come home from the store, and she felt condemned. To the well-bred folks of Atlanta, she was as bad as a Scallawag. But sometimes, when she was alone, Scarlett ran her hands beneath the lap robe and hoped that Rhett was wrong about children and grandchildren, that the child she was carrying would understand one day. I hope you’re nothing like Frank, she thought. I hope you have shoulders like mine.

I’ll never be hungry again.

“It’s no use, Scarlett. You can’t scrub out the past,” said Rhett when at last he came to Tara. “You can’t take back the last ten years, no matter how you’ve come — to appreciate my charms.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Scarlett snapped. “There’s never any going back. Not ever. But Rhett—” she reached for his hand. “I love you, and at last we understand each other. We can build something out of that.”

They argued about it until Rhett left again, fuming and bitter, his Panama hat pulled low over his face. Scarlett made an unannounced visit to Charleston the next month. “I was thinking,” she suggested, “That we might sell the Peachtree Street house.”

Scarlett knew all the words for making men love her, so long as she understood what it was that they wanted. The Tarleton twins had wanted merry excitement; Charles had wanted to feel important and Frank had wanted to feel like a strong, successful man. Ashley had wanted someone braver and better than he was, and he’d found it in Melanie without having to risk himself on Scarlett. Scarlett had never understood what it was Rhett wanted, but she did now. Why, it’s always been my love he wants! So Scarlett spoke the right words, and this time she meant them.

“You were right when you said that we’re alike. Only—you’ve always known about me, whereas I’m just starting to know you. Will you tell me about that knife fight in California again? About the sail boat you won at cards?”

“You know those stories,” clipped Rhett. “You don’t need to hear them again.” So Scarlett went downstairs and pried the stories out of his mother instead.

The house on Peachtree Street sold within the month, snatched up by some Carpetbagger who wanted it for a hotel. Rhett traveled to Mexico, and returned to find Scarlett back at Tara preparing for spring planting.

“What do the women wear in Mexico?” she asked him, leaning on the porch railing in the slanting light. “What is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled?”

Rhett indulged her in brief, but then abruptly he chuckled and shook his head. “I know what you’re doing, you little minx.”

“Yes,” said Scarlett. “Of course you do.”

Tomorrow, oh tomorrow!

The clay soil of Georgia is red from iron oxides. It’s red the way rust is red, the way blood is red. If a blister splits open and your blood falls on the ground, that iron-red soil will just swallow it up. You can bleed and bleed, and the stuff in your blood will always be one with the stuff of the soil.

When cotton and vegetables sprout from the ground, it’s easy to believe they grew from your very own blood, and that your own sweat and tears watered them.

Never look back.

“We women were soldiers too,” Melanie said once. Scarlett didn’t respect her yet—at least, not consistently—but this might have been one of the moments where she first looked at Melly and thought not that her heart was soft and timid, but that it was a sword.

“We never expected to be – or at least I didn’t.” She looked around the circle of ladies, at India and Fanny, until her eyes came to rest on Scarlett at last. “We were children then. We all imagined the world far simpler than it was.”

Melly, India, Fanny, Scarlett. These women had all been girls together. They knew one another at seven, twelve, fifteen, swaddled in silks and trying to seem more grown-up than their playmates. They’d competed for beaus and Scarlett had mostly won, except where Ashley Wilkes was concerned. They had lived through the war together. Now, Scarlett sat among them on Melly’s front porch and tried to remember if she’d ever in her life felt like one of them.

For Christmas, Melanie gave Scarlett a small book of poetry. Scarlett never read it, except for the one verse which Melly had marked with a green ribbon. She bit back the urge to sigh when she undid the wrapping, but Melly pointed out the bookmark and said, “This one made me think of you, dear.”

Scarlett didn’t like to think of it now, but once she’d been sixteen in green muslin, confident that dimples and a clear complexion were the only weapons she’d ever need. She had been a child, but that child had not died when Atlanta burned. The belle of Clayton County was not in the grave with all the boys who’d never come riding home from war. Scarlett was alive. She was right here.

“What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost/ Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation/Like dream words most? / Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women. / I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair/ And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders/ And a leaf on your hair—"

Scarlett came home from her mills in the gray evening and she made her way back to the Wilkes’s ramshackle front porch. She left her buggy feeling condemned and she sat with the other ladies feeling alienated, but all the same she couldn’t bring herself not to go. The war was over, and these were the survivors. They were through fighting, hung up on glory, but Scarlett still hadn’t holstered her guns.

“We were soldiers,” said Melanie, and in her heart Scarlett added, “Some of us still are.”

I won’t let them lick me.

Supposing that Ashley had married her. Perhaps the sight of her in green makes him brave enough to shed his veneer of honor and say, “Yes, you’re right, I can’t live without you.” It’s a minor scandal when he casts Melanie off in her favor, but not for long. The war is beginning and besides, good men have made themselves fools for Scarlett O’Hara before. By the time the soldiers march away, the scandal is all but forgotten in favor of the fine figure they cut as they embrace at the depot: Ashley so brave in his uniform, his young wife radiant as she clutches him.

Ashley sends her long, meandering letters full of philosophical musings. Scarlett reads them uncomprehending and sends back missives full of I love yous. She kisses them when she mails them, sometimes with a Hail Mary for her husband’s safety.

Rhett doesn’t notice this Scarlett at Twelve Oaks, and so he’s caught off guard when he hears the young Mrs. Wilkes say something blunt and scathing at the Bazaar. He chuckles to himself in delight and later he asks her to dance, and of course Scarlett simpers and agrees, and it’s a merry night. But Rhett doesn’t come back to Atlanta for the rest of the war.

This Scarlett leaves for Macon with the rest of the women when the Yankees come to Atlanta; after all, she has no Melly to keep her in the city during the siege. She takes Ashley’s child with her, and it’s in Macon that he finds her after the war. He waxes poetic about the Old Days, the Horrors of War and Götterdämmerungs and the like. He looks at her with sad, tired eyes and Scarlett says yes, I heard you the first time. But what are we going to do?

Twelve Oaks is razed. They go to Tara. Ashley tries his hand at farming, but it’s Scarlett who manages to pick and plant and organize while Ashley’s fumbling attempts at working with his hands yield scant success. His heart isn’t in it, which infuriates Scarlett. C’mon, get up and fight! She looks into the tired face of the man she loved so ruinously at sixteen and wonders what she ever thought was so noble about him.

When taxes come due there’s no way to pay. What’s more, Ashley doesn’t even try. It’s here that Scarlett breaks with her husband. Between Ashley and Tara, it’s Tara every time.

So Scarlett bullies her husband into calling old debts in from a few impoverished friends and when that isn’t enough, she goes to see the tax assessor dressed in green velvet and makes some very personal insinuations about Mr. Jonas Wilkerson. From there, Scarlett bullies her one-time-beloved and does as she pleases, and Ashley has to live with the fact that it’s his wife who provides for the family. In every world, it is Scarlett O’Hara who keeps Ashley Wilkes alive after the war.

His pride lays down in the dirt and dies. Scarlett Wilkes shakes her head bitterly and plants more seed in her red, red earth.

Supposing Scarlett could have imagined all this. What do you think she would say? Perhaps in her youth she would have cherished the idea, but the hard-eyed Scarlett who emerged after the war would have only leveled her small shoulders and said, “What does it matter what would have happened? I’ll think about it later.”

There but for a lot of gumption am I.

The day after Bonnie died, Scarlett called for the buggy and went to her store. Rhett took this as proof that Scarlett had never really loved the little girl, that she was devoid of maternal affection as he’d always suspected, but Scarlett was grieving in her own way. She threw out two uncut bolts of blue velvet: expensive fabric over which she’d have upbraided a clerk to hell and back if he’d wasted even a few inches.

It was true that Scarlett had never wanted any of her children when she’d carried them. She had not felt joy or love or any of the feelings that other women described when first she saw them. What she did feel, in the moments after Dr. Meade placed each child in her arms, was a fierce surge of protectiveness. She was certain that she would work and sacrifice and even die for her children, if need be. They were her blood, her flesh, her kin.

Scarlett had hated pregnancy each time it happened to her. She hated feeling large and lumbering, hated the way that her tiny waist bloated and grew until even her modified dresses didn’t fit right. She hated the inconvenience of morning sickness, the limitations on what she could do, the necessity of seclusion as delivery drew near. It was nine months of hardship and frustration capped off with many long minutes of excruciating pain.

Bonnie had died in an instant. She’d been flying towards the hurdle and then, half a breath later, she’d been gone. Standing in the back of the store with two bolts of blue velvet before her, Scarlett swallowed back tears that Rhett would never see. It wasn’t right that a child who’d taken her so much time and effort to bring into the world could be gone from it so quickly.

When she returned to the house a few hours later, Rhett had locked himself in the bedroom with Bonnie’s tiny body. Scarlett paused for a moment outside the door, but then she squared her shoulders and kept walking.

Just a few more days for to tote the weary load.

Scarlett had a habit of humming “My Old Kentucky Home” while she worked. Splitting wood, planting and picking cotton, driving between her mills, keeping the books—even sewing. The song was a thoughtless thing, an instinctual thing. She hummed it the same way a person might worry lips between teeth or tear at nails.

She repeated the words again and again until her heart pulsed to their rhythm. Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. I’ll think about it tomorrow, when I can stand it. Tomorrow, tomorrow. No matter, ‘twill never be light. I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my kin. I’ll never be hungry again. They were a mantra: something to hold onto when the whole breadth of her world had narrowed to a single point. A refrain. A liturgy of surviving.

Just a few more steps

Rhett loved Scarlett and it was terrifying. He feared that she would treat him like one of her country beaus: a lovely toy to play with and to tear to ribbons when she was done. He was afraid, so he hid his heart behind his impressive poker face and said “I want you” instead of “I love you.” He called her “pet” instead of “sweetheart.”

Scarlett loved Rhett and it was slow. He brought her bonnets and bonbons and Scarlett thought, “Why, it’s almost like I was in love with him!” He came to help her the day Atlanta burned, and Scarlett thought that she’d like to stay in his arms forever. When he chauffeured her to the mills, she thought that he was the only person in the world to whom she could tell the truth.

"You never told me you loved me, you know," Scarlett said the next time she visited Charleston. "I never knew. That's not to say you were wrong about me - about what I would have done if you had said something. But you should have been brave enough to risk it all the same."

Rhett closed his eyes for a moment and his mask slipped away. It was doing that more and more these days.

"But I did tell you — once."

"I think I would have remembered that," said Scarlett, pursing her lips.

"Ah. ‘It is far off; and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.’ I suppose my humble confession was the least of your worries that day."

Scarlett wrinkled her nose. "What?"

"The day Atlanta burned, my dear."

After a long moment, Scarlett gave a little gasp which turned into a sigh as it ended. "Oh. That's right, you did then, didn't you?" She shook her head. "Rhett, I do believe you have the worst timing of any person I know."

As God is my witness

The day she married Charles, she wore Ellen’s cream-colored silk gown, aired out in a hurry from the chest where it had been sitting since the O’Haras married back in 1846. She couldn’t breathe for how tight her laces were —sixteen inches, like Ellen’s waist was when the dress was purchased— and perhaps that was a good thing. Scarlett was light-headed throughout the ceremony and she scarcely remembered it afterwards.

The day she decided to have Frank, it was raining hard. Scarlett left the jail in sodden velvet and was grateful for the drops falling on her cheeks to disguise the tears. It was sunny the day of the wedding, but she scarcely noticed that. Afterwards, when she thought of marrying Frank, Scarlett would always remember the rain.

There was a fine mist over everything the day she got Rhett back for good. Scarlett was wearing her work clothes when he came riding up to Tara; she’d been walking the cotton fields that day, overseeing the progress of the crop. They were both a little damp when he kissed her.

I’ll never be hungry again.

O’Haras and Robillards had always known how to dig their nails in, and by God, Scarlett was both. Her namesakes had long ago fought for their own plots of Irish earth; had survived and died and been hanged fighting to hold onto it. All Scarlett’s forebears, her folk, had left crescent-moon imprints on all that was theirs when it was finally pried from her hands. Scarlett gripped her little ball of clay and felt her nails dig into the heels of her hands.

She was her father’s hot-tempered daughter, but she had her mother’s steel-hewn spine. All the years of her life, she never saw Ellen Robillard O’Hara rest her back against a chair. When Scarlett’s own time came, she held herself every bit as straight as her mother: she didn’t rest or lean, just stood and stood.

Maybe this is what she was always made for. Her green eyes weren’t for charming young men, they were for seeing dresses in curtains. Her hands were never supposed to be soft; they were meant for digging in the red dirt. Even her lips—Rhett was wrong, they weren’t meant for kissing. Scarlett’s lips were as sharp as the words that she spoke when she wasn’t afraid what anyone thought. They were meant to draw blood.

She had been sharp all her life, even when her edges were carefully concealed in layers of satin. Scarlett was not made to be soft; her core held no gentleness. She could not pretend otherwise. All she could do was stand straight, and hold up her tired old shoulders like they were the strongest thing in the world.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

One day, at the Butler home in Charleston, Rhett taught Scarlett how to play poker, and subsequently how to cheat. They were still playing hours later, counting cards and hiding them in sleeves and making all kinds of ridiculous bets on losing hands. Just as she was taking off her right earbob to call, the thought rose to Scarlett’s mind unbidden: “What on earth are we doing here?” And just as quickly, there was the answer. “We’re living.”

At the end of this most recent road home, weary and damp from running through the fog, Scarlett found her way back into Rhett’s arms. In the evenings she listened to his stories and witticisms, and late at night she listened to the sound of his breathing. I will not speak of undying glory, she thought. Rhett was still here, and so was she. They were both still here.

Scarlett took off her left earbob too, for good measure. “I’ll raise you,” she said. “I have a good feeling about this hand.” There was still an ace hidden up her sleeve, but if Rhett noticed it he didn’t say anything.

They survived together. They built something new. There is always profit to be made in building things, and these two were nothing if not industrious.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

#i am fully aware that none of you followed me for gone with the wind lol #that said- it's one of my all time favorite books #like. in a dead heat with narnia #i've wanted to write some sort of character study-ish thing for gwtw for just about as long as i've had this blog #and having just reread it last week i decided it was time #had a lot of fun messing around with style here #is the prose a little self indlugent? absolutely #but it was fun #if lucy pevensie is half of my heart scarlett o'hara is the other #they absolutely would not get along #but that's beside the point #(actually you know who actually might mesh pretty well with scarlett? eowyn. probably not great friends or anything #but at least a nod of respect)#to tote the weary load #leah stories #literature makes us more human #pontifications and creations #also for the record this is the most i'm willing to speculate about what happens post- novel #the sequels are all trash and unlike with say Susan i'm very much content to say #'I believe in Scarlett's ability to succeed. she'd gonna be fine'#and apart from that let the ending be bittersweet and hopeful #trying to fill it in much beyond really broad strokes is a totally futile endeavor #and i have no idea why people bother trying #'tomorrow is another day' deserves to be the last word in scarlett's story #that is all

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