Five Things that Never Happened is a multi-fandom sub-genre of five different AU's strung together and presented as a single fic
disclaimer: not my characters
pairings: implied
warnings: as gory as the film, has death
Five Things That Never Happened to Sheldon Jeffery Sands
-
I.
And
his wrists were fucked off like an abrupt ending, bones and nerves and
sinews ribbon-flapping from arid winds in a celebration of the
decrepit. He's outside, had left the lone nutsucker, that they'd
thought could hold him, with knee and neck snapped. a kick to the 'cap when the pants are down, a quick wrench of the forearms to crack the spine
And
he itches for a cigarillo, is jittery for it. He takes his aggression
out on random cartel from the street, hunting them down one-by-one and
breaking their bones, crunch-sharp, with relish even though his stumps
scream from the pressure. Look ma, no hands. He's always known how to apply leverage.
He misses the feel of a cell phone.
He misses eating cleanly. He misses combing his hair. He hates having to resort to a series of rope loops to fasten his pants. And he would smile calmly anyway except.
He
can't hold a gun. His phantom fingers ache for it; he's become animal
and scrabbling. His dignity drags dust like an old whore's tits, much
abused since times past when he was full of it and perky.
But
oh, how much closer to the violence he's forced to embrace. He feels
death pressed against his back and breathing down his neck, lining
their arms up and substituting scythe-filled hands to his non-existent
ones. He renders death in the shadows and is caught only once.
El Mariachi pulls up short. Measures Sands quietly.
Offers a cigarette.
II.
"You have such a foul mouth, and you don't do it justice." They'd said.
His
mouth was a ragged mess now, bloody and inflamed and slick. His gums
were empty and he was left with a impotent, hacked-off lobe of a muscle
that moved just enough so he could swallow. They liked it when he
swallowed; which he could just barely do through the drugs that they'd
pumped him full.
His jaw was sore, but they'd preserved his bone
structure carefully. They'd proclaimed it too pretty to destroy, and
him too useful to let go. They moved him when things went hairier than
the fat lady's ass because, while Barillo was replaceable, a beauty
such as Sands was rare.
They fed him soup like a pet, when
they'd remembered to feed him, and he would dream they tasted of copper
and bitter salt and let the fury drive him. He'd always used anger as a
goad and wasn't above using it on himself.
He thinks he's developing resistance to the tranquilizers.
He is wrong.
It was more adrenaline and pure will
that lets him move when gunfire breaks out at the far side of the
compound. He grabs and wrenches and dislocates the hip of the current
fuck. Takes the guns and rakes his way through the grunts (shoot first and ask ques--oh wait, I can't),
until he meets one broad shouldered Mexican whom he doesn't recognize.
This surprises him because he'd thought he met all the cartel by now,
in the Biblical sense.
It's the only thing that saves the mariachi.
III.
She
gives Sands a parting eskimo kiss, because they both loved irony and
because she remembers too well how he misquotes references and the
places his face goes asymmetrical.
Cut off thy nose if it offends thee, but cut off your own, you shit-breeding cunt.
She had gripped his jaw and pouted at daddy. Insisted that no one should be prettier than she.
Insisted that there was no worse outrage, with a manic grin.
A
strong wire, heated hot enough, can cut through anything and cauterizes
as it goes. So when Sands stumbles out of the door there is no blood to
offer to the land. But the offering of pain and shame is enough, to
keep him living.
He wears a bandanna. It hangs strangely. He can't wear sunglasses anymore and he keeps his hair long.
El
Mariachi's face barely has time to rearrange itself into horror and
pity, and Sands doesn't give him time to change it. He later wishes he
had because it's rendered immortal now, in rigor mortis.
IV.
And
so they took his earlobes and pulled it far and tight and sliced them
off like chicken wings, stuck a short, thin drill in to crumple his
inner ear and it felt like someone was stirring up his brain. But no,
they made sure to leave that intact.
The world keeps on tilting. Wait, fuck it, that's him.
He's lost his balance.
He
feels like he's beating himself against something invisible, and that
nothing makes a dent, gives a fuck or makes a noise. He can only feel
himself screaming, sometimes, when he's loud.
He holds "The
Yellow Brick Road" in his mind, the full chords of an orchestra, a
woman singing, a grace note lilt, a man groaning, and the loneliness of
a single guitar. The sounds are correct, he tells himself. They will remain correct. He will keep these steady, and he will believe himself and he will still. He will still have Garland's biography.
Can you hear me now?
He
stumbles too many times to brush off or deny, but he can still shoot
straight. He escapes with most of his life, but he misses gunshot,
footsteps, wind, and strings.
He doesn't talk much, anymore.
It
doesn't help that he later meets El, The, musician, seranading devotion
to his country in fermented agave, bleached bone, new blood, and his
lips form words asking Sands what is wrong?
"Go fuck the ass you rode in on." Sands hopes he says.
V.
Sands is the teller of legends.
"How does one find El Mariachi?"
Because:
pause
Before they'd carved a second fuckhole from his skull, the good doctor was sadly interrupted.
"There is a man only known as El Mariachi−"
And, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
"Fuckface, there is only a man known as El Mariachi−"
But. No-one is blind.
"A man without a name."
Meanwhile, Sheldon Jeffery Sands had escaped the CIA, slipped through the runny bowels of the cartel and out again, defecated in a tumble into the lives of the townsfolk.
"Yes, he exists."
He shifts into the preexisting role that Belini'd held, when the asslicker first met him. When Sands had the three arms, two eyes, and one vision, and had waited for history to come to him baited by the call of his undefended back.
"Will you tell me where he is?"
And come they did, doctors and pistoleros and betrayers and scum. And he's survived the cartels with an eye intact, though there are no medals for that in these, the lands of the shattered.
"Yes: elsewhere."
He feels that his story is as half-formed as his half-sight; he feels like he should give something away, but he doesn't ask himself what.
---
author's notes: Fic is dedicated to inkbug for her picspam. And many many thanks to inkbug, lilneko, and linaelyn for beta!