Robert Rodriguez owns Sands and anybody else you may recognize from OUATIM. Lucky him. If he doesn't like me borrowing his characters, he can always send Sands over to my place to shoot me.

A/N: The comment about Sands's ex-partner grew into a completely different story, which I may offer up if this is well received. What can I say, Sands fascinates me!

1. The Day of the Dead

The man in black with blood on his face knew the sun was beating down upon him, but no ray of it penetrated his brain. Or his soul. The darkness was absolute. He was shivering--that would be shock, he knew all too well--and the wall behind him was the only thing holding him up.

"Are you going to be all right?" asked a childish voice.

Stupid fucking kid, with four bullet holes in me and no eyes, do I look all right? "I don't know," he answered curtly.

"You will be, senor," said the chicle kid.

The blind man swallowed hard. The stink of cordite was still strong in the November air, although the sounds of fighting were growing more distant. "You have to take me somewhere."

"Where?"

"Someplace close by where I can sit down. Where I can stay for a while. No people. No doctors." One of them did this to me, I'll be damned if I'm letting any more of them get a crack at me. Especially since I don't know what happened to Guevara. For all I know, they've pressed him into service on account of this coup.... "And let's hustle. Andale...."

The kid was silent for a moment. The wounded man didn't hear him move away. He waited, not daring to show his impatience. "I know somewhere!" Chicle sounded triumphant. "It's not far, Senor."

His legs protested; two wobbly steps and fell against the wall, hard. Hanging on with his good arm, he managed to make it back to vertical. "Which way?" he gasped.

As the boy guided him, the wounded CIA agent counted each step. From their starting point at the center of the city, it was four hundred, eighty-six steps to the door of his hiding place. Of course, his steps were short and halting because of his injuries and he lost count at least once, but it wasn't more than a couple blocks from their starting point. There was at least one alleyway involved; he could reach out and touch the far wall---there was the possibility of an ambush, but it was hard to feel fear. Hurting as badly as he was, he was tempted to sit down for a smoke and not get up, just lie there, bleed and fade away.

"Here it is, senor." The boy pushed at a door that opened with a rusty squeal. Sands felt old, splintered wood beneath his hand.

"Where are we?"

"A garage, senor, but there is no car. The people don't come back here anymore because they are old. Their garden is all overgrown, you can't see here from the house. Here, there's a chair in the corner." Sands dropped into the worn armchair with a grunt of pain. Okay, pain might not be the right word for it, pain was a puny description of his agony--hell, agony didn't do it justice. Hell, though, was getting close.

"Okay, I need you to help me get some stuff. From the drugstore. El pharmacia, understand?" His breathing was labored, and he hoped like hell he wouldn't have to repeat himself. Slowly, he explained what he was going to need, and gave the kid most of the money he had left.

God, to think just yesterday he'd expected to be 20 million pesos richer by this time and on his way out of this sorry country forever. Nope, just another example of a beautiful woman completely fucking up his life. Hell, he never would've landed in this situation in the first place if it wasn't for his ex-partner's sexual harassment charges. Goddamn psycho bitches. Women just couldn't be--

"Senor! Senor!"

Sands groggily realized that the kid was back. He must've been out of it for a while. Not good. "Did you get my stuff?"

"Si." He could hear things thunking together as the kid set down a box. "Hy-dro-gen per-ox-ide...al-co-hol, anti-biotic capsules, tablets of as-pirin and co-deen. Bandages. Gauze."

"Money well spent," the agent sighed.

"No, senor. The pharmacia was open, but there was no one there because of the fighting. I took what you told me to get. I got all I could carry." The boy fumbled the handful of bills into the man's shirt pocket.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Manolo."

"You're a good kid, Manolo. Now, I need to get myself fixed up. You'll have to do some of it, especially if I pass out." He waited for an answer. The kid was probably standing there nodding at him like an idiot.

"What do you need me to do, senor?"

"My name is Sands. First of all, help me get my shirt off." He talked the kid through the procedure, first on his arm, then the side wound, and finally the leg injuries. "Now, clean your hands with the alcohol. Pour the peroxide right on the wound, that's it. Open a couple of those antibiotic capules and pour the contents directly---damn, that burns. God, I didn't think it could hurt any worse. Pack the hole with gauze, wrap the bandages around it to hold it in place. Okay, that's it, quick and dirty. It'll do for now."

The arm wound wasn't too bad; it hurt like a motherfucker, but the bullet hadn't stayed in and once Manolo rinsed off the old blood, he reported that it was already showing signs of clotting. His left thigh still had the bullet inside, but Sands was reasonably sure it hadn't hit bone. He'd lost enough blood, amateur surgery would be too risky. The right leg had entry and exit wounds and was a bitch to clean. The side wound was still seeping blood, but just a little, Manolo said. That concerned him; it could mean he was bleeding internally. Still, it was too low to have hit a lung. His knowledge of anatomy was fair; he knew his liver was on the other side and from the angle, he was fairly certain his kidneys had escaped.

After tending those injuries, he pulled his tattered garments back on and steeled himself for the worst. His clothing was filthy with blood and dirt--also not good, he knew--but he was so cold from the loss of blood that he didn't dare not wear it.

"I'll do this part," Sands said. He carefully placed his sunglasses in his shirt pocket, finding a grim amusement in the habit. Manolo gave a horrifed gasp when the glasses came off. Sands braced himself as Manolo dribbled isopropyl alcohol over his hands. He'd picked a helluva day to go out without a spare pair of rubber gloves. "Peroxide."

He found himself ironically remembering a discussion during his long-ago training that had mentioned hydrogen peroxide as a method of blinding someone. "That's why it's a bad idea for head injuries," the instructor had advised them.

Well, he couldn't make it any worse than it already was, could he? He carefully daubed the dried blood on his face. "Did I get it all?"

He heard a faint "Si" from several yards away. "Good." He hesitated, then tilted his head back and poured peroxide into the first cavity. The peroxide bubbled and foamed up; he turned his head and let it drain out, then repeated the procedure on the other side. He did it several times, until the bottle was empty. He tried to think of it as putting in eyedrops, but applying a post-cannabis dose of Visine is a lot different from having peroxide fizzing in your empty eye sockets.

"Take the powder out of five--cinco--capsules and put them in here." He held out the cap of the peroxide bottle. As soon as Manolo gave it to him, he tapped it into the hole. A sound like a sob escaped his throat. "Five more for the other side."

When he could speak again, he asked, "Are they still bleeding?"

"No, Senor Sands."

"Okay. I'm just going to wrap them, no use packing them. Look, one more thing. Just one. Can you get me a blanket? Here, take this--" As he reached for the wad of bills, he heard sneakered feet moving rapidly toward the door, then the hinges brayed and the door slapped shut behind Manolo.

"Oh, that's just great," he muttered in disgust. "Scared the little turd off."

He leaned back in the ratty old armchair. There was a sound of distant gunshots--the fading echoes of the failed coup--a siren, roaring its way to or from someone else's tragedy. The roll of gauze bandage lay on his lap. He picked it up, then put it down again. Now that he was alone, he had to know.... His searching fingers found his cheekbones where they'd always been. Not far away, his brows were intact. Between the two areas, the landscape had changed. What was left of his eyelids were torn and swollen. There was nothing between the two spaces; he probed for a moment, then leaned over the arm of the chair and retched.

Flames stabbed his torso. Caught between pain and panic, he managed to stay conscious. "Oh, fuck!" he said quietly to himself. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He repeated the word like a mantra. "I am sincerely fucked up." The two new holes in his head were throbbing. His side had a rhythm of its own. His arm pulsed. His left leg was almost numb, unless he even thought about moving it---in which case, it hurt like everything else. The entrance and exit wounds on his right leg screamed in stereo.

He found the final bottle, the one that was still sealed, and pulled the clump of cottom out of the neck. Tablets, as he'd requested. Maybe not a great idea on top of any residual shit he might have in his system from Barillo's torture cocktail, but the pain overruled his caution. He swallowed four of them dry, gagging, but keeping them down by an effort of will.

On his empty stomach, they hit him like a ton of bricks. Inside of five minutes, he was snoring.