"Mariachi Song"

A/N: I recently discovered Desperado and Once Upon a Time In Mexico and fell in love with them, with Desperado my favorite. This story was the result of my latest obsession. Enjoy!

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Prologue: Vengeful Love, Burning Hate

It was pain that assaulted her senses first, a hot, burning pain that blinded her eyes and made them burn with tears. She blinked but could not focus her sight, seeing only a wide expanse of blurry sky stretching far above her head. It was night, and she could hear an owl calling from its perch in a tree near the house that stood silent and unforgiving behind her. Stars twinkled at her, cold and silent, and it almost seemed to her that they were laughing. Laughing at her.

She moaned and raised a shaking hand to her head, trying to seek out the cause of her agony. Her searching fingers felt her hair, tangled with sweat and a sticky substance she could not place, then they traveled up to her forehead, and to her mistake brushed against a deep blood-crusted groove that sat burning and aching beside her right temple. She gasped at its protesting throb and realized that her whole face was stained with spilled blood. Her blood. That was why her eyes were burning like they were.

Memory came slowly back to her as she struggled to remain conscious. Standing with Cesar as they waited for a final showdown. Seeing a young man dressed in the black clothes of a mariachi confront them. Cesar arguing, preparing to shoot the young beauty that had accompanied the mariachi. And finally one brother shooting down the other.

Cesar. She pushed down tears as she realized—Cesar was dead. Ignoring the way her stomach wanted to roil with her movements, she sat up and looked around, willing her eyes to focus. Slowly but surely they did, but she realized that perhaps that was not such a good thing after all.

The air smelled of spilled blood gone cold in the dirt. Bodies already lay stinking and swelling beside and around her. But there was only one she focused on—the one in front of her dressed in a familiar white shirt and pants. He had fallen on his side, a pitiful broken parody of the living breathing man he had been only hours before, his shirt stained dull red by the four bullet holes that had ripped into his torso.

Cesar.

He had been the first to fall, testing the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong thing. She knew that there was no way he could still be alive but she couldn't help but whisper a denial as she gently turned him over onto his back.

His still-open yes seemed to glare at her from beyond the reach of death and she shuddered. Was he accusing her of allowing the mariachi to kill him? Should she have acted faster? She should have acted faster, should have expected Cesar's brother to hide his pistols down his sleeves like he had. But she had not so they had all paid the price.

Now Cesar lay dead along with the remainders of his men, and she was the only one still alive. She had nowhere to go and nowhere to hide and could only welcome death. Already a heavy dizziness was assaulting her, making her want to vomit from blood loss and pain. She was lucky the bullet had only brushed her head like it had. She wanted nothing more than to lay down and let black oblivion take her.

But still Cesar's eyes glared at her, and she realized that she could not. His ghost would not leave her alone until his death was avenged—avenged against the one who killed him. And suddenly a raging hatred blazed to life in her stomach, lending her strength, as she thought of the one responsible for this.

She staggered to her feet. She would avenge Cesar's murder. She had to.

She would find the one called El Mariachi. And he would pay for killing his own flesh-and-blood.