"Battleground"
"Well, El," Sands panted, and lifted the stolen pistol, "you knew it would turn out this way eventually." Sweat beaded down his forehead and blood trickled down his chin from a split lip, and a black bruise was already forming on his cheek. Both men were gasping for air following their fight for the weapon Sands now held, bloodied and bruised from swift merciless punches as they attempted to subdue each other, one fighting to preserve a life and the other to destroy it.
Eyeing the muzzle of the pistol warily, El nodded. "Si," he answered, trying to keep the despair and—yes—betrayal from his voice. "I hoped it wouldn't." He looked up from the pistol slowly and met the blank sunglasses that covered Sands' ruined eyes, the last permanent gift Barillo had given anyone. 'You're just going to throw this away?' he wanted to shout. 'After all we've been through?'
Sands laughed but it was one riddled with insanity and wrapped in deadly purpose. There was nothing that could stop him from pulling the trigger. El had played his last hand, and he had lost. "Karma's a bitch, right? You shouldn't have come back for me, El."
"I had hoped you were better than this."
Sands shrugged, his expression icy and dangerous. "Hope is an illusion, you shit-for-brains, just one of life's ways it brings you up just so it can knock you on your ass again—which you already know, by the way." He shrugged, unmindful of the way El tensed at the reminder of his family's murder. "I'm tired of living a lie. Aren't you, El?"
It was not a question; it was a challenge, just tempting El to spring forward and attempt to wrestle the gun from Sands' grasp. But there was no winning in this situation.
He didn't answer.
Sands' expression twisted into a bitter smile. "I thought so."
"Sands, please—"
But the ex-CIA agent only lifted the pistol higher, making El freeze in his tracks. "What, is the great El Mariachi begging? Why, I never thought you had it in you, El—I must say, I think my life is complete." But again there was no answer, and finally something shifted in Sands' face. "I appreciate that you tried, El I really am."
El swallowed hard, resigned. Sands was not a true friend to him, but there had been respect on his part for the mutilated gringo. "I know."
Something sagged in Sands' posture, as if that was all he had ever wanted to hear. "I'll see you in Hell, then." And without hesitation he lifted the pistol pointed at his temple and fired.