Pulling Malcolm Reynolds from a bar in some backwater moon was no different than pulling him back from the spittle and whirr of Alliance shellfire. So many wrong, foolish decisions, ones that a commander straight from the enlisted rank and file would never have called his battalion into doing; and yet Mal had, and they'd seen victory almost every time. He was as stubborn as hell, but Zoe knew it was that stubbornness in him or nothing, nothing at all. Take it away, and she might as well have walked the deadweight drunk from that first bar, instead of her commanding officer. Take it away, and she might very well forget the war.

-- Beyond the world by jazzfic