I write this for all the leaders who have to make the dangerous choices.
I'm with Diogenes and J. Michael Straczynski on this one...give me an
honest man willing to die for all the wrong reasons....

The Price of Leadership

(c) 2000 by M. Megan O'Neil

	Pain.  That was all she felt.  Pain searing through her right arm
and
blazing in her ribs.  Meg slumped forward in exhaustion, biting back
the stab of pain in her ribs.  She rested her head in her hand, trying
to ignore the beeps of the moniter.  She raised tired eyes to the still
figure on the bed.
	Benton Fraser took labored breaths, the air raspy through the
tubes.
One bullet through a perfect angel in scarlet had created this broken
man struggling for breath.  The harsh sterility of the white room and
white sheets hurt her eyes.  The bile the disinfectant smell brought
up forced its way up her throat.  She bolted for the bathroom, heaving
over the toilet, exorcising the filth and violence of the night.       
The
vomit forced itself up again and again, splattering on her serge, falling
in chunks on the toilet seat, burning her esophagus and cutting off her
breath.  The bathroom permeated with the stench of it.
	Large hands held back her dark hair as she dry heaved over and
over.
Meg fell back against the wall.  Her body was trembling from the pent
up emotions that forced their way through her mind and soul.  She drew
her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly, trying to curl up
into a ball and disappear from the blood and filth.	Lieutenant Harding
Welsh stared down at the woman whom Vecchio had dubbed The Dragon Lady.
Normally she was formidable enough to intimidate even him.  Tonight,
though, the dragon's wings had been clipped and all that was left behind
was this broken, sobbing woman.  It was impossible to tell whether the
red she wore was blood or Mountie serge.	Thatcher's perfect, pale
cheek
had an angry gash, a gaping, bloody canyon across snowy skin.  She was
a broken, ugly reminder of what had gone wrong tonight, a pitiful hero
who had tried and lost.
	Welsh thought of Vecchio tossing feverishly in his hospital bed,
ranting
and raving like a lunatic.  He thought of Fraser clinging to life by
a precious thread in the next room.  And then there was the lonely,
forgotten
figure at his feet.  Tonight, the good guys had lost.  He bent down,
taking the fragile, shaking figure into his arms.  A sobbing voice
whispered,
"I thought-we-It was my decision.  I--me-I didn't want to send him in--And
Vecchio...I had to."
	Harding Welsh stroked a dark head bathed in sweat and blood.  He
rocked
her, shushing quiet agony.  "You and I picked our best men to go in with
us.  It was a right decision, Thatcher."
	"It's my fault.  My fault."
	He smiled sadly, softening the bitter truth.  "No.  Just damned
unfair.
The price of leadership is doing what's necessary, not what you want."
	The dam broke and she finally cried, letting the wound in her soul
drain
and scab over.	Harding Welsh rocked Meg Thatcher as she wept on the
sterile floor of a hospital bathroom.  In the next room, Benton Fraser's
heart moniter beeped slowly. 

	"How do you know the Chosen Ones?  No greater love hath a man than
he
lay down his life for his brother...not for millions, not for glory,
not for fame, but for one person, in the dark, where no one will ever
know or see..."
	-J. Michael Straczynski, BABYLON 5, "Comes the Inquisitor"