Meg's Bad Day


Alright, first a warning.  I had a few problems with All The
Queen's Horses (as you'll figure out if you read this),
especially that I felt like Thatcher kept acting like an emotional 
and brainless bimbo.  This, therefore, is my re-envisioning
of ATQH to explain some of the problems I had with it.	Although 
I've written this story with only the greatest respect for DS, if
ATQH is gospel to you, you probably shouldn't read this.
Also, this story contains massive ATQH and VS spoilers and is 
in a more serious general tone than "Sleepless Night."	As
usual, these characters, etc. are not mine (with one obvious 
exception), and no infringement of any sort is intended; I can't 
pay all of my bills as it is, so I'm not worth suing.  Okay, now, 
if anyone's still reading, here goes.  This story takes place the 
night of the events of ATQH.  Comments more than welcome at 
GILBERTK@MTC.MID.TEC.SC.US.


Meg's Bad Day
By Katherine Gilbert

    It had all started with a cup of coffee, she realized once
she got home.  It had been early in the morning, before a long 
train ride, and sharing just one cup with the television crew hadn't 
seemed a bad idea at the time.	Little had she known what its 
consequences would be.
    Meg Thatcher couldn't let go of the truly abyssmal depths her
day had reached.  Runaway trains and the threat of nuclear
annihilation, she thought now, as she lay on her bed, still fully
clothed in her RCMP uniform, had been the good parts.  The really
embarrassing part had been that she'd acted either totally brainless
or ridiculously overly emotional throughout the whole thing.  "I'm
an RCMP inspector," she muttered to herself.  "I was in charge of
the whole train.  Why couldn't I have acted like it for two minutes
at a time?"  She grabbed a nearby pillow and put it over her face
in humiliation.
    "Okay," she thought, as she let out a deep sigh, "what happened 
was *not* my fault.  Maybe I should have tasted the tranquilizer
the terrorists slipped into the coffee, but I *was* preoccupied
with the details of 100 different things . . . And who expects 
train station coffee to be good, anyway?"
    It had made sense, she knew, that they would feel it neccessary
to drug her, since she was the one in charge, but it had made the
day so embarrassing.  She decided to take the pillow off of her face,
although she still couldn't muster the courage to sit up.  "I should
have realized what had happened when my thinking went fuzzy just as 
we were getting on the train," she said out loud to herself, . . .
then she laughed.  "Right, I should have realized I was thinking 
fuzzy, because I was thinking fuzzy.  Good going, Meg.	Are you 
sure it's all worn off now?"
    Laughing slightly at herself at least motivated her enough to
sit up.  "I wish I would have at least realized what had happened
while I was around Fraser and Frobisher," she continued to herself.
"I hate to have them thinking that I'm just stupid and unstable."
    Thatcher began to play with one of the buttons on her tunic,
as she continued to reexamine the events of the day.  First of all,
since she had just been thinking, when the trip began, that she was
tired from a lack of sleep recently, she had tried to really wake
herself up by giving the men a rousing speech, only it hadn't come
off that way.  Her brain simply hadn't been cooperating with her.
Why else would she allow Fraser to break into song for no reason?
Who did she think he was -- Nelson Eddy?  Admittedly, he had a 
beautiful voice, but singing mounties was hardly the image the RCMP 
really needed to put forth.  Also, she knew that if she hadn't felt 
as though she were thinking through several layers of gauze, she 
would have noticed the discrepancies with the film crew herself.  
Maybe her out-of-it state explained why Fraser had motioned for her 
to follow him to the other car as though he were the one in charge 
of the unit?  Maybe it would also explain why she felt like she was 
hearing an entire band backing up Fraser as he sang and why the 
mountie who had seceeded him in leading the song also seemed to be 
singing with Fraser's voice?  "Maybe I just need to get more sleep," 
she said.
    The failed speech and the song were only the beginnings of her
miscalculations that day, though.  She started twisting her button
first one way, then the other, as she pondered her compounding errors.
They had continued when she was unable, at first, to even understand
what Fraser was getting at, when he was trying to warn her, and when
she had simply felt unable to make a decision of any sort about how
to save them.  When Fraser had jumped out the window to begin their 
rescue, she'd felt as though her feet were made of cement.  "I didn't
exactly give them a struggle when they captured me," she muttered.
"I just did what they said . . . God, how embarrassing."
    She sunk her head back further onto the pillow and groaned.
The thread holding the button was becoming frayed.  "If I hadn't 
been both aroused and angry at being tied up to Fraser in that way,"
she thought, "the drug might have taken much longer to wear off than
it did.  At least I started to think a little more clearly when I 
took out the gunman, but I could have done it much more effectively
if I hadn't been drugged."  She laughed at herself again.  "This is 
a surprise?" she asked herself.
    Meg closed her eyes and stopped fiddling with the button.  She
refused to think, just now, about the increase in romantic tension 
this day had caused with Fraser.  That was another problem unto itself.
Anyway, the list of her failings, caused by the tranquilizer and its
aftermath, had only begun.
    It was with even greater pain that Thatcher thought of the next
events of the day.  "If I hadn't been thinking so fuzzily, I wouldn't
have hit that guy's leg on the top of the train," she thought.	"I 
knew -- well, I usually would have known -- where that would lead."
She sighed, then said softly, "Thank God Fraser wasn't hurt."
    She continued to lie back with her eyes closed for a few more
seconds, but finally realized that she was going to get a neck cramp
if she continued in this position.  She sat up and forced herself to
open her eyes.	The events of the day had only gone down hill after this, 
she realized.  What with the chase and seeing Fraser fall to what she
had thought was his death, her metabolism had sped up enough to rid
itself of much of the tranquilizer, but that had only made things worse.
Once the drug was gone, she had gotten the typical post-tranquilizer
reaction:  everything -- every emotion and every sense -- had seemed 
too much for her, and she had become an emotional yo-yo.  "Why else
would I have blithered off to Frobisher in that way?" she asked.
There certainly wasn't any other reason for it.  She hadn't known 
him particularly, the timing was laughably inappropriate,
and her feelings for Fraser, while being extraordinarily churned
up by coming down off the drug and the shock of his assumed death,
weren't really any of his business.  She groaned again.  "Couldn't I
have done *something* right today?" she pleaded to no one in particular.
    Another long sigh followed, and she went back to playing with the
button on her coat, which now hung by a thread.  She'd tried to be 
effective after the drug had begun to wear off, but, not realizing 
that she had been drugged, the emotional volatility was hard to fight.
She shook her head at the embarrassment she felt over having stopped
a critical maneuver on top of a moving train in the middle of a serious
hostage situation to have an emotional discussion with Fraser.	What
followed after it seemed even worse.  "That never should have happened,"
she whispered, as her voice choked a bit.  "If I hadn't been in that 
state, that never *would* have happened."  The fact that it hadn't been
entirely unpleasant was not a fact she was ready to think about.
    As she began to sigh again, the thread that held the button in 
place gave up its battle.  Holding the button in her hand, she looked
at it and laughed.  "And I was criticizing Fraser the other day for
losing his boots," she laughed.  Deciding to try to avoid pulling off
any more buttons, she continued to play with the dislocated one, as
she thought.
    "God, the rest of the day didn't get any better," she continued
to herself.  Getting taken hostage a second time had been humiliating
and incompetent enough, but she knew that if she had been in any more
sound state of mind, she could have at least escaped later when she
was being dragged along behind her abductor.  "Having to be rescued by
all of the men in your command doesn't say much for your leadership
skills," she muttered.	Then, she'd even been unable to think of 
anything sensible to say to Fraser to explain why their little
interlude couldn't repeat itself.
    The ride back to Chicago, as well, when they'd gotten another
train there to help them, had possibly been the longest of Meg's
life.  Fraser had been silent, that cop he was always around had 
kept smirking at her, that silly wolf kept looking at her knowingly,
and Frobisher had kept avoiding eye contact while he seemed to be
keeping up a running, muttering dialogue with himself, except that he
only seemed to be keeping up half of a conversation.  Frobisher's
mental quirks weren't her problem, however, and the cop had always
seemed to hate her; they didn't concern her as much as Fraser did.
    She and Fraser had parted for the night, along with the rest
of the group.  When she had gotten herself home, even her cat hadn't
been around to comfort her.  That had left her where she was now,
sitting on her bed, occassionally talking to herself, while feeling
humiliated, confused, and depressed.  Realizing why she had behaved
the way she did had been somewhat comforting, but it didn't help her
too much.  After all, her men still didn't know why she had.
    Thatcher put the button on the bedside table, as she sat up on 
the side of the bed and tried to make a mental note to repair the 
jacket tomorrow.  Her cat, Carter, finally decided to wander into 
the room at this point.
    "There you are!" she muttered, annoyed.  "Where were you when I
needed you?"
    Carter looked up at her innocently.
    "Alright," she asked him, "tell me something.  If your commanding
officer got taken hostage twice in one day, almost got you killed,
was an emotional basketcase, and seemed unable to make a clear decision,
would you assume that she had been drugged?"
   Carter came up slightly closer to her but looked as though he were
wondering about her sanity himself.
   "That's what I thought," Meg sighed and paused for a second, as she
shook her head.  "I can't just let him think that I'm incompetent," she
continued, as she stared at her bedroom wall.  "I have to talk to him."
    Carter meowed.  Thatcher looked down at him.  "Yeah, it would be a
lot easier if he had a phone."

*********************************************************************

    An hour later, at about midnight, Thatcher had changed clothes three
times (deciding that her uniform -- especially with its missing button,
the neckline on a dress she had tried, and jeans and a sweatshirt all
created the wrong image) and, wearing a fairly conservative suit, was
knocking on Fraser's door.  She wasn't particularly looking forward 
to this discussion but she knew that it was neccessary.  When the door
began to open, she began saying, "Constable, I apologize for waking
you," when she saw that Fraser was still dressed in his uniform,
having only taken off his jacket and slightly damaged hat, and showed
no signs of having gone to bed.  He paused for a second when he saw
it was her.
    "Inspector Thatcher. . . I wasn't expecting to see you tonight,"
he finally said.  "Would you like to come in?"
    Margaret moved inside the door, but then stopped.  "I think we 
need to talk," she said, looking into Fraser's eyes, "but I think it
would be best if we could find another place to do it." Having a 
conversation with a subordinate she'd recently kissed in a room
where the main feature was a bed didn't seem like a good idea.
    Fraser's eyes seemed to follow Thatcher's thought, as he 
inadvertantly looked at his bed.  "Understood.	I believe there's
a restaurant nearby which is open 24 hours," he said, as he got his
coat.  Diefenbaker's ears had popped up at the scene before him, but
Fraser gave him a warning look.
    Thatcher seemed to acquiesce, but did say, as they left, looking 
at his apartment building, "This is, preferably, somewhere where 
we're unlikely to be stabbed?"

*******************************************************************

    The walk over to the restaurant was mostly consumed by Fraser's
running commentary on the misrepresentation of the dangers of his
neighborhood in the minds of his acquaintances.  Thatcher's silence
had only added to his slight nervousness, and he had ended up talking
to fill the void.
    By the time they had reached the restaurant, whose few patrons
were either chatting up the waitress or were lost in their own 
thoughts, had taken a booth close to the door and far away from 
everyone, and had ordered and received water (Thatcher had decided
that more coffee today was *definitely* out), the tension was
rather thick.  They sat for a few more minutes in silence, before
Inspector Thatcher spoke.
    "Fraser," she said with a sigh, staring at and playing with her
waterglass, "I feel I ought to explain my conduct today."
    "There's nothing to explain, sir" Fraser interrupted.  "We were
in very odd circumstances, and our emotions . . ."
    "That's not what I meant," Thatcher went on.
    "Oh," Fraser seemed a little upset.
    "What I wanted to discuss *first*," Thatcher emphasized, "is 
why I was of so little use today."
    "Were you?" Fraser tried to say innocently.
    Meg finally looked up at Benton.  "Fraser, you have a very 
annoying habit of pretending not to understand what people are
saying."
    "Do I?" Fraser asked.
    "Fraser," Thatcher said warningly.
    "Sorry, do go on," Fraser responded.
    Thatcher sighed.  "Fraser, I was drugged this morning.  The
terrorists put some sort of tranquilizer in my coffee.	That's why
I was of so little use most of the day."
    Fraser pondered this.  He had been looking her in the face since
they had come in.  He then nodded understandingly.  "That explains
a great deal actually."
    "You didn't really think I'd be that incompetent on my own, did
you?" she asked.
    "No, sir," he responded.  "In fact, I'll admit that's been bothering
me for much of the day.  I wasn't particularly sure why you were acting 
so out of character . . . Of course, tranquilizers also explain why you
seemed so . . ."  He stopped suddenly, realizing that he didn't want to
irritate her.
    "Go on," Thatcher said, not looking very pleased.
    "Well, sir, you were . . . well, you were rather emotional today," 
he continued.  "But the wearing off of the tranquilizers does explain
that . . . It does make sense, too, that the terrorists would try to
target you, not enough to fully alert suspicion, but enough to keep
you from being much of a threat, . . . although you were still rather
formidable," he added.
    "Fraser, I was taken hostage twice today and almost made a fatal 
calculation in regard to one of my men."  She looked at him intently.
    "Yes, sir," he responded, "but you never would have if they hadn't
done that to you."
    Thatcher paused.  "You really believe that I'm capable then?" she
asked.
    "Of course, sir . . . In fact, I should have realized what was
happening, . . ." he paused.  "I believe I was just so surprised by
your lack of, well, of leadership in the situation that I was afraid
to think into it too closely.  I'm relieved to know the reason for
it now."
    There was a silence between them before Fraser spoke again.  "Was
that all you wished to talk to me about, sir?"
    Thatcher went back to staring at and playing with her waterglass.
"No, . . . no, it wasn't, . . . but I needed to know that I still had 
your respect as an RCMP inspector first."
    "My complete respect, sir," Fraser responded, finding it hard to
keep his feelings for her from showing in his eyes, happy, for that 
reason, that she wasn't looking at him.
    "Alright.  Good."  Thatcher looked back up at him.	"Fraser, 
today has been very confusing."
    "That it has, sir."
    Thatcher paused again.  "If I have your complete respect, Fraser,
then why did you suggest that I would gladly blow up several dozen
innocent people to solve a hostage situation?"
    Fraser cringed.  He had spent most of the night reproaching 
himself about this already, and he still felt no less guilty about it.
He looked away from her for the first time.  "Sir, do you remember,
when you first came, I was returning from the hospital after being shot?"
    How could she forget?  Those reports about him had formed her first
-- negative -- opinion of him.	"Yes, I remember," she said.  "Your 
friend, the policeman, shot you . . . accidentally?  I did read the 
reports about it."
    "That's not the whole story, ma'am," Fraser replied.  "There was a
woman involved." 
    Fraser went on to tell Thatcher about his relationship with 
Victoria and where it had led.	"I loved her," he finished.
    When his story ended, Thatcher's eyes were slightly teary, which she
was doing her best to hide.  She then took a breath and said, "Fraser,
I hate to ask, but what does this have to do with what you said to me
today?"
    Fraser smiled and looked up at her, then back down at the table.  
"I've been coping with what happened with Victoria ever since then --
blaming her, blaming myself -- it goes in shifts . . . Anyway, sir .
. ."  He looked back up at her suddenly.  "Do I have your permission 
to speak freely?"
    "Fraser," Thatcher responded, "we're here to clear the air.  I
don't want the events of this day to come between us as we work."
    Fraser was still looking questioningly at her.
    Thatcher sighed.  "Yes, you have permission to speak freely."
    "Thank you, sir," he went on.  ". . . Since I met you . . .
well, my feelings have gotten rather . . . personal lately, . . .
and, in some ways, I'm still not sure if I'm ready for another 
relationship since her.  I still don't trust."
    It was now Thatcher who was looking questioning.
    "What I mean to say, sir," he continued, "is that I think I was
taking out some of my lingering anger -- at myself and Victoria --
on you . . . I'm afraid.  I don't want to get hurt that badly again."
He sighed.  "What I said today was inexcusable.  I'm sorry."  Fraser
was looking at her as though it took all of his formidable will not
to reach out and touch her.
    "I guess having a woman almost kill you again brings back some
memories," Thatcher said self-reproachingly.
    Fraser cringed.  "Nothing today was your fault, sir.  You did
a great deal for the state you were in.  I realize that . . . I 
think, though, earlier, that I was just as emotionally unstable as
you were, only I hadn't been drugged . . . I've always known that
you were incapable of what I accused you of . . . I haven't got an
excuse for suggesting it."
    Thatcher smiled.  "At least I can understand your reasons for
saying it now."
    Fraser still didn't look entirely comfortable.  "Ma'am," he
said, "there is one other thing I need to apologize for."
    "What's that?" she asked.
    "For taking advantage of our being handcuffed together to ask
you personal questions -- about your perfume, or, well, lack thereof,"
he responded.  "I had no right to, and I'm sorry.  I wish too," he
went on before he lost his nerve, "that we had been able to be . . .
close under different circumstances, when we were both more emotionally
. . . aware."
    Thatcher hardly felt capable of responding.  "So do I," she finally
said softly, before realizing that she shouldn't allow the conversation
to drift too far in that direction, "but it wouldn't be a good idea."
    "I know," Fraser said, looking away.  He then decided, however, 
that this might be his one chance to say what he felt, so he continued
and looked back into her eyes.	"Ma'am, . . . Meg, I had wondered
before whether I would have been interested in you had we not been
commanding and subordinate officers, had we not been put together 
so often; I had tried to tell myself -- convice myself -- that I 
might not.  I know differently now . . . Even if we can't be together,
I want you to understand the feelings I have for you . . . I . . ."
    "Fraser," Margaret stopped him.  She extended her hand toward him
but retracted it at the last second, afraid.
    Fraser reached across the table and placed his hand over hers
gently.
    There seemed to be a certain energy which surrounded where their
hands gently touched each other.  They continued to look deeply into
each other's eyes.
    Margaret found herself wishing that she could share just one more
kiss with Fraser, one which she would be in her full senses for, but she
knew that one kiss for her could only signal a beginning and not an end.
Fraser could only think of a time which could stretch out endlessly with 
Thatcher, of a time which would begin with a century of simply holding 
her close, feeling her warmth, of a time which included neither guilt
nor recrimination.
    Thatcher came back to herself after a few minutes and slowly, 
reluctantly pulled back her hand.  She tried to put on her 
professional air.  "Now that we've gotten some things straight, I 
really should be getting home," she said.  "So should you.  The Ride
is still early tomorrow.  After finally getting all of the men and
horses to Chicago, we really can't afford to not show up."
    Fraser nodded, as she stood up, not wanting to let her go, but
already trying to distance himself, as was she.  "I'll walk you to your
car," he offered.
    "No, thanks," she replied.	"I'll be fine."  Her eyes were still 
full of emotion.  She couldn't decide whether the last hour or so had
made up for her day or only made it worse.  "I'll see you tomorrow,"
she said.
    "Of course, sir," Fraser responded.  He then watched her receding
form until she disappeared from view down the street.