Author's Note: So, ummm, long time no see and all that. I found the following story wandering around my document files and realised I had never got around to posting it, so thought I should probably wander over into this corner of the internet again...especially since it is the story for probably the most iconic "I don't like guns" moment. I hope you enjoy it! See you next time inspiration strikes :).

PS. I think I might be a little behind on review responses...If you left one and I haven't replied yet, my apologies! I am going to wander over there next and hopefully catch up. Unless I get distracted by all the stories other people have been posting that I missed!

"Never said I couldn't use them." – The Big Bang Job

The next gun...Well.

Eliot did put it – them – down...Tossed them aside, actually, in an insouciant piece of bravado for his audience of none. But that wasn't the point. Because he picked them up first, and used them.

And that was his choice.

Well, it was and it wasn't. Moreau had him backed into a corner. He could have left the gun where it lay on the ground, and done his best to shepherd Nate and the Italian through the kill box to the door in the hope that one of them would make it out and be able to take Moreau down. But the odds of it working out like that weren't good. And Moreau was a big threat to leave unchecked.

Which left the alternative.

Looking down at the gun, Eliot knew that he could get Nate and the Italian – and himself - out. As the Italian looked from him to the gun and back again, he knew she knew it too. Although she might, possibly, have been less certain than he was that would be following them out that door.

Moreau, Eliot knew, would have no such doubts.

Nate was a step behind, unwilling to acknowledge the option until Eliot had the gun in his hands.

"Eliot, listen..."

It was the opening either to an offer for Eliot to put the gun back down and damn the consequences for Nate or anyone else, or to a request that Eliot put aside the boundaries he had set for himself when he got out of the hired gun game.

Eliot didn't want to hear how the sentence ended.

Moreau might have forced this choice on Eliot, but Eliot was damned if he was going to let it be forced on Nate.

Nate, who acknowledged and drew on Eliot's specialised skills, but had never expected him to use them on a job. Even in that grim moment at the park the previous day, it had turned out that only Eliot had been considering the possibility he might have to actually kill Atherton.

So, no. There was a gun, and Eliot knew how to use it. Moreau won whether or not Eliot used it, but in one of those choices, only Eliot lost. He could still buy Nate a victory.

"Get her out of here," Eliot told Nate, nodding at the Italian.

The handgrip of the gun fit snugly in his palm, as if it had been made just for him – the perfect weight and balance at the end of his arm, bringing everything into slightly clearer focus. Timing, trajectory, strategy, and cover. All things he would have been thinking about and calculating in any fight, but that now seemed to flow through him – a flicker of movement caught in the corner of his eye translated effortlessly into the movements needed to avoid and then eliminate the threat. Eliot gained another gun and there in his mind's eye, even as he returned fire and dove for cover in a better vantage point, his path out was crystal clear. He had tried hard to forget the exhilarating high this brought – the world in brighter colours and more perfect angles and rhythm than even the best endorphin rush or chemical high could achieve. He had all the time in the world, every action planned and its possible consequences anticipated and accounted for. As he slid across the floor on his knees, bullets whizzing so close above his chest that he felt the air cleave at their passing, he knew that every one of his bullets was finding its target, his heartbeat marking the time and distance needed to aim those shots for which he didn't have line of sight.

Eliot had four bullets left when the guns around him fell silent. He waited a beat, just to be sure, then took final aim at a barrel marked 'flammable' and ignited an inferno.

It was symbolic as much as practical: years' of work to avoid taking more lives going up in flames as the work of as many minutes tipped his head count into the next decade.

The sound of a gun being cocked behind him echoed above the roar of the flames.

"You said you didn't like guns."

Chapman, of course. Cocky little bastard couldn't resist the drama of this moment. He sounded smug, as if he had caught Eliot in a lie. It would have annoyed Eliot, except that he was still coasting down from his perfect high, ice water running through his veins.

He turned.

"I don't," he said, a cold truth dousing the heat from the flames behind him.

Utter surprise swept the smug expression from Chapman's face as Eliot raised a gun and fired. He wondered idly, as Chapman crumpled to the floor, whether the surprise had been at Eliot's statement or the speed of his draw.

"Never said I couldn't use them," Eliot added.

And if Chapman hadn't known that, he should have. It wasn't like Eliot's training and skill with weaponry was even a badly kept secret – and given that Chapman had taken over Eliot's role with Moreau, he had had access to more information than most. He could and should have taken advantage of that – and his failure to do so had cost a lot of men their lives. Not good men, granted, but still unacceptable.

Speaking of cost, Eliot had one more score to settle for the afternoon. Some small part of him considered taking the guns to that job – there would be a poetic justice to turning Moreau's recreation of Eliot Spencer into his own downfall ... not to mention the tempting certainty of Moreau's ending with a single shot where Eliot found him. But something stopped him.

Moreau might have forced his hand into picking the gun back up, but there was nothing now to force him to keep holding it.

Eliot felt flames of anger start to lick at the icy calm still settled over him. This was his choice, too, and he was going to go after Moreau his way. And that meant no gun.

He ejected the clips with the remaining bullets from both guns and tossed them aside. Over the years, the move had become so automatic that he barely noticed it. This was different, though. There was a wrench to it, as if it was more than just the weapon being discarded. He would need time to get the reflex action back. In the meantime, he forced nonchalance into the act. He might be throwing down more than just empty weapons, but it wasn't anything he was prepared to want.

Eliot's anger at Moreau was growing – anger at the way Moreau had manipulated him, at the choices he was being forced to make again, at the threat they posed to his relationship with the team. By the time he reached the hangar and found Nate taunting Moreau, and Moreau in turn holding Nate at gun point, it had built to a full head.

That gun was the last straw for Eliot – or, alternatively, the license he needed to attack.

"You got one shot, Moreau!" he yelled the warning.

He was taking Moreau his way, and that meant a fair fight.

Moreau's gamble on shooting the Italian was a surprise, but not enough to slow Eliot's momentum. That required Nate physically grabbing him, getting in his face and reminding him that there were other ways to deal with Moreau – ways, although he didn't say it, that would destroy Moreau but keep Eliot intact.

It slowed Eliot enough for Moreau to get safely into the plane. And he was grateful to Nate for pulling him back. Mostly.

But as Eliot stripped his shirt off, as he pressed it to the Italian's wound to slow the bleeding, and as he watched first the paramedics, and then the rest of the team, arrive, his palms tingled, itching for the familiar weight of a loaded gun.

No, Eliot never said he couldn't use guns.

And there was a very good reason for that.

The (Fifth) End.