round 3 overflow post

[starkmodistries.livejournal.com]

Round 3 Overflow Post

This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.

Format:
SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners")
--- Link to the prompt
--- Text of the prompt

--- Link to the fill
OR
--- Entire text of the fill

EXAMPLE:
Prompt: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=1038472#t2038174

Charles/Erik -- Charles is a bakery owner whose most frequent customer is Erik.

Fill: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=0139482#t4502942

Charles started off the morning the same way he always did...

Comments

FILL: The Better Men (23d/24)

[turtletotem.livejournal.com]

Charles dove for the gun—

"Crucio!"

—and fell back with a strangled scream. The sound seemed almost to blind Erik; he threw a hard punch to the back of Shaw's head, but Shaw anticipated him, dodged and spun and Summoned the gun to his hand—

Then screamed as Dolly sank her teeth deep into his arm.

He snatched his arm free with a force that tumbled her off the altar, turned on her with the gun, face a mask of rage.

Erik stepped between them, felt a flare of astonishing pain before he was aware of hearing the gunshot, tried to grab for the gun but somehow his body just wasn't working quite right, he was falling down...

He was aware of Dolly sobbing brokenly, a red stain spreading on her arm. How could she be—? He looked down at himself. The wound was in his leg – oh, yes, the pain was localizing there now. The bullet must have gone straight through him and hit Dolly anyway. What a waste of his effort. Get up, he told himself savagely, and almost achieved it before his leg buckled again.

Shaw tucked the gun away, grabbed Dolly by the arm – digging his fingers into her wound – and dragged her back onto the altar, screaming and kicking. He had the blackthorn wand in his hand. Erik didn't remember dropping it.

Dolly had kicked the glow-ball off the edge of the altar, but it was still brightly visible on the floor, starting to flash white, closer and closer together.

Erik made another attempt to stand and nearly blacked out. There was a swift-growing puddle of blood around him now. He reached out a hand, "Accio wand!" – it quivered in Shaw's grip, and Shaw turned to kick Erik in the head.

The glow-ball flared white, solid and steady, and Shaw raised the wand over Dolly.

Charles lunged past Erik, throwing himself onto Shaw just as he opened his mouth for the spell.

They tumbled across the floor of Cerebro, a tangle of shouts and blows, a hard elbow to Charles's temple, a solid punch to Shaw's teeth. It didn't take long. It didn't have to. When Shaw fought free with a kick to Charles's ribs, the glow-ball had gone dark.

Shaw stared at it a moment, his face going white, eyes flat as coins, in the most frightening expression Erik had ever seen.

He aimed the wand at Charles and screamed "Lotus Letalis!"

A beam of dark green light, thick and solid as his arm, ripped itself from the tip of the wand. Charles, just pushing to his feet, caught it in the small of his back. His spine arched, almost elegantly, head snapping back. He seemed to balance there a long, impossible moment.

Then he dropped to the floor without a sound.

And now, now Erik found he could stand, that he could run, a not-very-human scream ripping through his throat, and Shaw turned toward him, smirking a little as he brought the gun to bear.

The gun, of course, because the wand would probably refuse to harm its true master. The fact that Erik had a gut-level horror of dying looking down a gun barrel was, perhaps, a bonus.

It didn't matter. Erik was already calling his wand, had been from the moment Shaw cast the lotus spell, calling it to his hand in a way he didn't even know he could do, there was no coherent spell involved, he just called it and it came, jerking free of Shaw's grip even as he drew the gun, and Erik didn't even have to say Protego, only half-think it and he wasn't even quite sure the wand had touched his hand yet before the shield sprang into being around him, at the very moment that Shaw pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit the shield and bounced straight backward, hitting Shaw between the eyes.

He fell back with a dull thump onto the floor.