Title: Anatomical Correctness
Author: Hannah 'Rainwoman' Orlove )
Fandom: Once Upon A Time In Mexico
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own them. I have no money, just a few back issues of Green Lantern and X-Men. Please don't sue.

The shoot-out wasn't particularly glamorous or glorious, but it had been successful. Inasmuch as Sheldon measured his successes. In this case, it was by the body count he managed to rack up.

El hadn't been hit by any of the cartel members but Sheldon had been shot in the shoulder.

In their little hide-out, just a couple of hours afterwards, he was doing his best to keep his cool.

"You know, I really liked this shirt." The blood had soaked through and made it quite sticky. El was taking it off with a knife.

A sigh was the only concession El made to having heard him.

Sheldon shook his head and did his best not to wince when the blade touched his skin.

When the shirt was taken off and the air was nipping at him, Sheldon stretched his good arm out behind him. He heard some thin metal pieces being picked up.

"I need to …" El stopped speaking suddenly.

Sheldon turned his head towards the mariachi out of surprise. "What is it?"

"Where did you get those scars?" Pure curiosity, which was quite unusual to hear in El's voice.

"Which scars? I've got quite a few, in case you hadn't noticed."

"The ones on your chest."

"These?" Sheldon touched himself on the pectorals. He couldn't see them now, but he knew there were thin white lines under his fingertips.

"Yes, those. Where did you get them? I've never seen anything like them."

He smiled. "My mastectomy."

"Your what?"

Sheldon shrugged. He'd explained this often enough; one more time wouldn't hurt. "My mastectomy. I had mine almost ten years ago."

"What is that?"

Sheldon shook his head. He should have known there was no way El would have heard about any of this. It would take a while. "It's a surgery that removes breasts."

"Why would you have had breasts?" The confusion of the Mariachi could have been heard by a deaf man.

Sheldon answered in the tone one used on a child who was asking a question over and over. "I was born a girl. I had surgeries to correct my body."

"Correct?"

"Yes, correct." Sheldon let out a harsh breath; he'd just moved his bad arm. "I wasn't born in the right body."

"Why would it be the wrong body for you? It was what you were born with."

"Just because I was born as a girl doesn't mean I was one, El." He sighed. "This'll take a long time to explain, so why not just get the bullet out of me now, so I can tell you about it later?"

"Right, right." El was probably glad to not be talking about something that potentially had the vague possibility of possibly cutting down on his machismo.

Almost an hour later, the wound was cleaned, bandaged, and sewn up, and Sheldon began to talk.

He trusted El enough to tell him these things. He knew that the mariachi wouldn't go around and write "Agent Sands is a pussy" on half the truck stop bathrooms of the country. Or even just on his office door. El was no Louis Stanton, thank God for that.

He didn't really like El, but he trusted him enough to tell him about most of his life.

He told El about pretending to be 'Greg Thatcher' on the playground when he was four, refusing the dresses his mother bought, the hate he'd had for his name. He told him about the difficulties 'she' faced in school when 'she' always wanted to be the father or the boy in games. He told El about some of the difficulties the surgeries and the therapies had with his job - he had needed to retake most of the entrance tests, for example - but it had ultimately been worth it to see the box with "m" checked off on his ID.

He told him a bit about transsexualism and its place in the little niche of society that he was a part of; there wasn't enough time to tell El everything, and Sheldon knew that he wouldn't understand it all. He told him about 'her' lesbianism and how he wasn't just a transsexual but a transhomosexual as well – at that, he wasn't sure if El was going to be sick, pass out, or do both, which brought a grin to his face.

Sheldon left out some parts, though. He didn't speak of his joy at getting his first erection or how 'she' wouldn't masturbate or even look at her genitals, because that would just be an admission of 'her' sex. He said nothing about feeling sorrow for 'her' lost ovaries and womb without knowing why. He made sure not to tell about the ridicule or the threats at the office or how his family had taken the news when he had told them he wasn't a girl after all.

When he was done, the sun was rising. El had just one question after the story was finished.

"What did you change your name to?"

"Sheldon Jeffrey." Might as well tell him his name; no reason not to at this point.

"Why Sheldon Jeffrey?"

"Well," Sheldon began to tick the reasons off on his fingers as though he'd thought about this for a long time. I wanted a clean break from my old sex, and a name change would give that. I didn't want to completely break off from my family, so I kept my last name. 'Emily' has no masculine equivalent.

"Plus the pentameter. Shel-don Jeff-rey Sands. It's nice and even." He smiled. "One might even call it balanced."