Author's Note: Here is another installment. This follows Chapter 36 if you are worried about understating chronology. I apologize and add a warning that it is dark, so be forewarned prior to reading. Thank you for reading and reviewing. Thank you Sara for reading and proofing for me! I always appreciate your input!

Another day had passed, and the reality only became more real each day. Each day he missed her more and more. Every time he walked in the door of the house on Peachtree street, he imagined that he would see her, that she was around the corner ready to leap out at him, or upstairs playing with her dolls, or in the yard with that damned pony. In his mind he knew that she was gone, but years of training his eyes to look for her could not be relearned in a few days time. There was nothing that he could do to forget, and then he felt guilty for wanting to forget her. What kind of father would forget his child or desire to blot her memory from his mind? That would make him less of a parent than his lowest imaginings of Scarlett's failings. Scarlett would never forget.

It was torture to see the empty spot at the dining room table where she should be sitting and murder to walk into his room and see it cloaked in darkness, where only light had been allowed - shadows swallowing her small bed.

And so he drank to forget, to wipe away the memories, to dull his senses so that for a moment he could be free of this burden. He would only visit the house during the day when he could imagine that Bonnie was with Wade and Ella playing with Beau at the Wilkes's house. There had only been a few nights of Bonnie's short life that he had been apart from her, when Scarlett's life hung in the balance after her miscarriage. And yet even then, she hadn't been far from him. Her absence possessed him and followed him like nothing had ever impacted him before.

He shunned the loud barroom of the Girl of the Period Saloon, crowded with people looking for a good time each night for his own private room upstairs. He needed the solitude. He couldn't stand to have people avoid him, avoiding mentioning Bonnie as if she had never existed and yet neither could he stand the mention of her name. It was more than he could suffer through. The table before him was littered with empty bottles, for he had forbidden for anyone to enter the room besides Belle. He craved another drink, and so he quickly poured out a shot in the glass, quickly forcing it into his system. The liquid burned as he poured it down his throat, stinging as he fought for control of emotions. There were too many of them, and he was overwhelmed by their weight. He poured another and tossed it back greedily sucking the glass for every last drop, each successive drink burning less and less, until his lips and throat were nearly completely numb.

The whiskey sloshed in his glass as he clumsily filled it with another measure and reached to pick it up - Golden droplets sliding over the edge of the glass and splashing on the table. All vestiges of control had long since abandoned him. Sleepless nights had etched deep hollows under his eyes, which were as sunken in as a skeleton's. His face was red and bloated from the excess of alcohol he had consumed over the course of the last week, but it was not enough. He was still lucid enough to remember why he was drinking, why he could not stop drinking. He was trying to drown the memories in drink as he himself drowned in the madness of his grief. He bolted the glass and slammed it on the table, eyeing the bottle restlessly, having lost all track of how many glasses he had consumed.

His eyes stung with unshed tears, even as he fought to control them. He would not cry, for the pain was too deep for tears. Tears were for the weak. The world seemed to spin around him, his eyes struggled to focus for he had not slept in days. Exhaustion combined with his drunken stupor to the point of incapacitation. His eyes roamed aimlessly around the room until they dropped shut. He pounded his fist on the table and futilely struggled to rise, forcing his heavy eyelids to open. He could not sleep, for when he slept he relived the moments as they had happened. He watched as she stubbornly urged that pony forward over the jump, as Scarlett's scream rang in his ears. It all moved as though time had slowly frozen, like a pond of slush in winter. And yet every time he watched, he could do nothing to change the course of the dream. He could not stop the events no matter how he tried. He could hear the crack as her small body hit the splintering wood. He could hear himself screaming, and each time would wake up in a cold sweat. No, he could not allow himself to sleep. The only way to forget was for him to drink to such excess that he passed out. He let out a harsh, barking laugh that held no humor in it. He would drink himself poor at this rate, wouldn't that punish Scarlett for her rejection and failures as a parent, for her to live in poverty again, and yet he knew in his rational mind that he would be dead before that happened. Each day he needed more liquor to hold those dreams at bay, more to find that welcoming, unknowing darkness. And yet the darkness was his only solace in the depth of his despair.

He could not live with the pain. He was not strong enough for this. The guilt festered inside of him like a gunshot to the stomach. Yes, that was what this truly was like. A shot to the heart or the head was too mercifully quick, the end of suffering was almost immediate. But this pain had been almost instantaneous, and yet as the days passed it only grew and rotted him from the inside out. It spread through his body like the tentacles of a vine growing on the side of house, slowly ripping the structure apart. He was consumed by it so much so he was no longer himself but a mere vessel for his grief and guilt and anger.

"I killed her." He muttered, his voice slurring as he dropped his head into his hands. "God damn it. I killed her," his shoulders shaking with wrenching sobs.

A gentle hand fell on his shoulder, and he jerked and turned his head up, struggling to focus on the person trying to give him a small measure of comfort. The dark hair, piled around a pointed porcelain face… he reached his hand forward to feel what his eyes were too tired and inebriated to see. "I killed her," he muttered again looking for absolution or an end to his suffering. "Scarlett, I killed Bonnie."

"Rhett, I'm so sorry. Miss Belle sent me up here to check on you," a voice softly drawled. He tried to reconcile this vision before him with the image in his mind. "I'm going to get Miss Belle," she offered and backed away.

He slumped against the chair, shrinking away from the figure before him. "God, Scarlett, I didn't mean to kill her. I tried to stop her," he moaned. He reached a shaking hand forward, but then his eyes began to momentarily clear, enough for him to recognize Annie. "I'm sorry Annie," he stuttered. "I thought you were someone else."

He ran his fingers through his hair, then he reached again for the bottle, aching for it to bring him the numbness that he so needed. His hands shook as he poured another glass, the stream missing the glass for a moment until he shifted his hand. He clenched his hand around the glass and raised it to his lips, quickly swallowing it, praying that it would stop the pain.

A firm hand once again touched his shoulder and then caressed his cheek. "Rhett, darling. Come on. Let's go lie down. You're going to hurt yourself, if you don't stop."

"I don't care, damn it. She's gone. What do I have to live for?" He shuddered as Belle pulled him to a standing position, forcing him to lean against her, carrying nearly the full brunt of his weight on her shoulders. Her calm firmness left no option for his refusal.

"Don't worry, darling," she cooed. "We just need to get you to lay down for a bit." They staggered together the short distance to the bed. She coaxed each step from him, and together collapsed on the bed. She sat and held his head in her lap, softly caressing his hair. "Shhh, Rhett, " she crooned.

"I killed her, Belle. I killed my daughter. And Scarlett blames me." He stuttered, his breath coming in gasps. His eyes hollow and empty, void of life. "She's gone, Bonnie's gone. I…" He stared at Belle, his words suspended in the air, for there was no explanation to the grief he felt, no way to express the darkness eroding his soul and spirit. Tears could not convey the depth of his pain. No words could explain the grief of the loss of his child, her future, all of the many moments that had been stolen from him, all compounded by the knowledge that he had played a role in this loss. He hadn't needed to hear Scarlett's accusations, for he already blamed himself for Bonnie's death, and questioned every choice he had made in regard to her. He clutched at his chest, the pain shooting in fiery streams as the muscles tightened and his breath came in short gasps. Belle fluttered about him, offering glasses of water, a cool compress, and softly caressing him until the pain finally passed. "Just leave me, Belle. Let me alone in my misery." He pulled himself to a sitting position. "I'll be fine," he offered as reassurance.

Belle slowly backed away reluctantly, not sure if she obeyed his edict, if this would be the last time that she would see him. He offered her a weak flash of a grin, which was more than he had attempted in days, and she finally allowed the door to swing shut behind her. "Just call me if you need anything, Rhett. I'm just down the hall." He sat in silence, listening to the sound of his own breathing, He sighed deeply and dropped his head into his hands. "Bonnie, I'm sorry," he whispered as though the child was sleeping beside him. "Bonnie, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of forgetting the sound of your laugh or the way you toss your curls when Mammy tells you no. I'm afraid that this pain is never going to stop, that I will never again know what is like to be who I was. I'm terrified that even now you wouldn't know me. You'd be disgusted with me. You'd tell me that I was nasty and that my breath smelled nasty."

He began sobbing so hard that he lost control and fell on his knees on the floor. "I wasn't ready for you to leave me. I knew from the moment that I first held you that I would struggle to let you go when the right man came along, but you were still just a baby. I'm not ready for this goodbye. I've been a rogue and a scoundrel for most of my life, but I never understood what love really was until I held you that first time. I know I am going insane without you. I've failed you in a hundred different ways. Bonnie, I'm so sorry." And yet there was no one there to talk to, not even one of her dolls to connect him to her. "Daddy's best sweetheart is gone. Bonnie! Why did you leave me?" He breathed, for no amount of yelling would bring the words to her ears. His world was awash in a gray cloud, and so he continued each day trying to find light in the end of a whiskey bottle, the only thing golden remaining within his reach.