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: Everyday Love in Stockholm 179/?

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

“Rogue,” he says sternly, and the girl grins, then relaxes from her military posture into a more natural ease, coming around the desk to stand by his side and show him her clipboard, pointing out each appointment as she goes.

It takes half an hour to finalise all of his meetings for the day, but all the time he is hyperaware of that damn folder waiting for his attention, drawing his gaze like a lodestone. Once Rogue has left - for real - he has no excuses left to put off opening it and taking a look at what’s inside.

The sunlight beats in through the window at his back and heats through his tunic as he turns to the first page, makes every word stand out stark black against the white paper, and as he reads he feels his schooled, calm expression grow tighter and tighter, jaw clenching tight with suppressed frustration. It’s elegant, truly inspired. There is a reason Emma is his second-in-command, and this is it - she is fantastic at this sort of deep planning, at strategising and putting together ideas until she can outline with pinpoint accuracy how she intends to achieve a goal five years from now, with none the wiser as to how she manipulated them to reach it.

He rubs a hand across his face, but this time it’s not to hide a smile. He likes to draw a line between who he is in private - Erik - and who he has to be to lead this country - Magneto - and most of the time it works, lets him switch off one from the other when they would only get in his way. He has taken compartmentalising his life to the level of an artform. But now…

The part of him that is Magneto, that is practical and pragmatic and takes the best political approach to achieve the best possible outcome, is telling him that Emma’s plan is not only feasible but might just be the best possible choice, given the circumstances.

The part of him that is Erik is screaming.

Good thing he has the helmet, really, or Emma would know just how torn he is over her brilliant, elegant, awful, idea. The thought of her knowing is almost worse than the thought of telling her they can discuss it.

Which, of course, they can’t.

Except they have to.

Gottverdammt.



IX

Magneto sits for a while, brooding over the plans Emma has laid out for him, twisting his paperclips into ever more Rorschach-like shapes on the desk and ignoring the rest of the work waiting for his attention.

The numbers she has laid out on the third page are damning, the cost of the camps and their running laid against the likely outcomes of various courses of action. Try as he might, he cannot dismiss the simple blue line she has drawn alongside the best possible endpoint, the red underlining of the various undesirable consequences from taking other paths.

His fist clenches, and the paperclips crumple together into one uneven lump, going from Rorschach to Picasso. “Verdammt.” He hisses it quietly under his breath, because he’s going to have to call Emma’s office, and grit his teeth against the fact that she will either be utterly calm about it all - as though nothing is amiss - or sickly sweet and smug, the tone of her voice enough to set his teeth on edge when he cannot help but feel that he is backing down, though he had made no commitment either way.

His reflection in the brushed steel surface of the desk is too blurred for him to see his own expression, just the barest shape of a man, leaning forward for the telephone at the far edge.

The receiver is smooth under his grip, and he’s just about to pick it up when he hears a high-pitched shriek from outside his door, shrill and unexpected. Forgetting the phone, Magneto lifts his head just in time to see Kurt tumble in across the lintel, tripping over his own tail and vanishing halfway to the floor only to reappear facedown on the carpet with a loud noise like the world imploding and a burst of dark smoke. The boy makes a disgruntled sound and gets up easily enough, pushing himself to his feet and brushing the dust from his short pants with his three-fingered hands as though this happens all the time, which it does.

The irritated little pout is the mirror image of his mother’s, rendered small and rounded by childhood.