Chapter 10
Sands and the CIA
Disclaimer: I don't own Sands. If I did, I certainly would not allow this chapter to happen to him.
Rating: A very strong R for language and violence. The beginning of this chapter is not for the squeamish.
Summary: At the not-so-tender mercies of his former employers, Sands reaches a turning point. This is the big one, folks.
Author's Note: Remember back in chapter two when I told you that it didn't matter if you imagined this story happening after either the slash or gen version of ATDHC? Well, this is the chapter where I make good on that promise. Think of which version you believe in. Hold it in your mind. Trust me, it will affect how you come out of this chapter. Now, start reading.
****
It was strange hearing American accents again.
He must have frightened them with his little performance outside, because when he returned to consciousness, he was sitting in a metal chair, his hands cuffed behind the chair back. This was a step up from the wire El had used to bind his hands, but not a big step.
Two men were in the room with him, talking to each other in low voices. They had no idea he was awake.
Being without eyes, Sands reflected, did have its advantages.
"Did you see?" one of them asked. He had a strong Boston accent.
"Yeah," the other exhaled. "Wow." This one sounded shorter, rounder. He had the kind of voice that belonged to fat boys who read dirty comics well into their forties while living in their mother's basement.
To his dismay, Sands became aware that he was not wearing his sunglasses. He never took them off, unless he was absolutely certain he was alone. He had no idea what he looked like now, of course, but he knew it couldn't be pretty. Once, shortly after El had left Puerto Vallarta, he had explored his face, dipping his fingers into the holes where his eyes had been, and he had felt such self-loathing then that he had nearly eaten his gun.
So the fact that two total strangers were staring at him now really pissed him off.
"You think that was the mariachi?" asked Boston.
Shorty made a neutral sound. "Could have been. But I don't think so."
"Yeah, me either. He looked like he was gonna piss himself."
Sands bit back a smile. Apparently El was a passable actor. That was good to know. He filed the information away in the mental dossier he kept in his head on the mariachi, tucking it in with notes like how El still dreamed of his wife every night.
"Hey. Look. He's awake."
Shit. Okay, so he wasn't as good an actor as El was. It wasn't easy to stay still when your head felt like the size of a watermelon.
"Do you want me to get Bel?"
"Nah. Wait a bit," said Boston. "So, Agent Sands, welcome back. I've heard an awful lot about you."
Sands raised his head. He thought briefly about going the stubborn, silent route, then discarded the notion. Talking was much more fun. "I just bet you have," he drawled. "Did they tell you I was insane?"
The junior agents hesitated. Clearly they hadn't expected this. Then Shorty said, "Yeah."
"Whaddaya know? Looks like they got something right for a change," he said cheerfully.
"Looks?" Shorty repeated. "Jesus."
"Again with the deifying," Sands said, trying unsuccessfully not to smirk. "You'd be surprised how often I get compared to Him."
"Yeah, I bet," snorted Boston. "You know why you're still alive, don't you?"
Shorty made an aborted sound in the back of his throat, telling Sands quite clearly that Boston wasn't supposed to have said that. He nodded to himself. So that was how it was. The CIA had no intention of bringing him back to the States. It was going to be a bullet in the back of the head for him.
As soon as they were done with him.
"Well, I don't imagine you want to know my recipe for Cochinita Pibil," Sands grinned.
"What the fuck is that?" asked Boston.
"It's a slow-roasted pork," Sands started to say. "You take--"
Boston hit him. Just a slap on the side of the head, but it set off a four-alarm fire inside his skull. Despite his best intentions, he groaned aloud.
"Shut up," Boston said. "Where is this mariachi guy you associate with? What's his name?"
"I associate with? You make it sound like we get together and fuck standing up in dark alleys," Sands said with a grin. He had not had this much fun in a long time. Since being posted to Mexico, he had rarely had any interaction with his fellow agents; he had forgotten how boring they all were.
Boston tapped his foot on the floor, expressing his impatience. "What is his name?"
"He doesn't have a name," Sands said, speaking slowly, letting his tone clearly express his belief that not only was Boston mentally deficient, but Boston's children and grandchildren would be, too. "Surely you knew that already."
"Everyone has a name," Shorty said.
"It doesn't matter what his name is," snapped Boston. He sounded really pissed, and Sands thought that just maybe he had found the only other non-boring CIA agent in the world. Which was not necessarily a good thing. "Tell us where he is."
Sands pretended to consider it. "No," he said.
Boston hit him again.
Sands laughed, using the sound to cover his involuntary gasp of pain. "Oh, come on! You weren't even trying that time. Put a little oomph into it."
"You want oomph? You got it, buddy."
The blow this time rocked the entire chair back. The pain in his head tripled, and settled in his stomach, making him wonder if he was going to throw up. He tasted blood, swallowed some, and grimaced. It was harder to laugh now, but laugh he did. "That was better," he said. "Much better."
"You better stop," said Shorty. "If Bel sees him beat up like this, she'll have a fit."
"Oh my Christ," Sands laughed, delighted. "You two are scared of a woman? I gotta tell you, from one man to another, that really hits below the belt." He made soft clucking sounds of fake commiseration.
"That's it," said Boston. "I'm gonna rip this fucker's balls off."
Feet slid across the floor. Fabric stretched. "Don't!" cried Shorty. He was obviously holding his companion back, with an effort. "Keep it together, man. You're only giving him what he wants."
Sands just sat there, grinning. He hoped he looked like shit.
He sure felt like shit.
Boston pulled free of Shorty's grip. "Leggo," he muttered. To Sands he said, "You know we can make you tell us. You were CIA once. You know what we're capable of."
"Go ahead," Sands said. "Bring in your car battery and jumper cables. I'll wait."
"You think we're bluffing?" Boston demanded. He sounded genuinely outraged that his threat had not had the desired effect.
"Please," Sands scoffed. "I was tortured by the best. You guys can't even come close."
"The best, huh? I suppose you mean Barillo."
"Hey, you're good. Not too swift, though. I bet you didn't graduate top of your class from the Academy, did you?"
That one was almost worth being hit again.
"Look at that," Botson said. "Funny how hearing that name doesn't bother you now. That was some act you put on outside."
"Did you like it?" Sands asked. "I was thinking of submitting it for Oscar consideration."
Shorty made an exasperated sound. "He's never going to tell us."
"You're smarter than you look," Sands said to him. "Good for you."
"How the hell do you know what I look like?" Shorty demanded. He sounded utterly confused.
"Who cares?" Boston interrupted angrily. Clothing rustled as he folded his arms. "Where is the mariachi?" he asked.
Sands sighed. "Listen to your partner, buddy. You know I'm not going to tell you," he said, being perfectly serious for a change. "And furthermore, you also know that nothing you to do me will work. So you might as well save yourselves a lot of trouble. If you're planning to shoot me, just do it now. That way you get to go home sooner. Why, by this time tomorrow you could be sitting in your underwear on your couch, watching Oprah, just like old times."
Boston lunged forward again. Sands laughed. Shorty grabbed for Boston, and maybe he got a handful of Boston's shirt, but Boston was obviously stronger, and pulled away before his partner could rein him in this time.
Sands' laughter was abruptly cut off as a large hand gripped his jaw. He heard the distinct sound of a pistol being pulled from a holster, and he steeled himself for the shot he knew was coming. They wouldn't dare kill him, not yet, but there were plenty of places you could shoot a man that were painful, and yet nowhere near fatal.
"Don't!" Shorty shouted.
The muzzle of the gun touched him, not on his forehead where he had expected to feel it, but on his empy eyesocket. He caught his breath, too shocked to comprehend what was happening at first.
Cold and invading, the gun was forced inside, a horrible metal rape he was powerless to stop. The pain was excruciating. His brain tried to process it and balked, wanting to send him back to that day when his life had fallen apart. The sensations were too similar, a nauseating blur of metal and blood and pain, all of it threatening to snap what remained of his sanity.
"Tell me now, you sick fuck," Boston said. "Or I'm pulling the trigger."
The voice helped, a little. It was not Dr. Guevara's voice. It reminded him where he was. He struggled to remain impassive, to stay silent through the pain. Blood streamed down his face, another reminder of the horror he had already lived through once.
But that was the thing, wasn't it? He had already been there, done that. And just like that, the horror receded. Suddenly what was happening struck him as highly amusing. Boston had almost had him there for a moment, but then, Boston didn't know who he was dealing with.
Smiling, as though he didn't have a gun jammed in his eyesocket, he said, "Fuck you."
In the silence that followed, he quite clearly heard Shorty groan.
Boston pulled the gun free, and Sands bit his lip hard to keep from crying out at the pain that ripped through his skull. The pistol descended again. He heard it coming, and he tried to move his head aside to avoid the blow, but he was too slow.
Pain exploded in his face as his cheekbone broke. Brilliant fireworks went off in his head, pretty colors he hadn't seen in over a year.
Still smiling, Sands passed out.
****
This time when he woke, only one person shared the room with him. She made a low sound of sympathy. "You look like shit."
"Thanks," Sands said wearily. His head hurt too much to lift it. His shoulders ached from slumping forward in the chair, putting all his weight on them. He wondered how long he had been out.
"You're not really crazy, are you?" Harrison asked. "It's just an act."
He laughed, or tried to. All he managed was a breathy wheeze. "Do you really think that?"
There was a long pause. She exhaled a long, slow breath. "No," she finally said. "I think you lost whatever sanity you had when you lost your eyes."
"There you go," he said. "I knew there was a reason they made you Station Chief." Christ it hurt to talk. Slowly he sat up a little, taking some of the weight off his shoulders. He couldn't feel his hands, and he wondered vaguely what kind of damage the cuffs had done to his wrists.
"Goddammit, Sheldon. Just tell me what I want to hear."
Sands grit his teeth and said nothing. He knew she had said his name only to bait him. She had always called him by his name, because she had known how much he hated it.
"Do you even realize the seriousness of your situation?" she asked.
He said nothing. The time for joking and small talk was over. Now was the time for silence.
"Where's the mariachi?" she asked.
Okay, now was the time for silence, except for a few choice words. "Fuck you," Sands said.
She gave an angry sigh. "Why the hell are you protecting him? If he was really your friend, he wouldn't have let you get taken by that stupid bounty hunter." Her voice grew sly then. "Or maybe he's already dead. Killed in the same scuffle that ended up with you in custody. Is that it? You want us to think he's still alive, so we'll go out on a wild goose chase, extend your life a little longer."
Metal creaked as she stood up. She had either been sitting in a chair similar to the one he was in, or perched on the edge of a folding table. Knowing her, he guessed the latter. She had always liked showing her legs off, and old habits died hard, even when the man in front of her was blind. "You know we'll find out the truth, Agent Sands. You might as well spare yourself any further unpleasantness, and tell us."
He laughed. It was really too funny. He was supposed to be so independent, not caring about anyone except himself. And here he was, practically daring his former boss to hurt him, all to protect a man he had wanted to kill only a year ago.
Life really was amazing sometimes.
"I fail to see what is so funny," Belinda Harrison snapped.
Sands just laughed. "You fail to see, I fail to see, we all fail to see," he chanted, laughing harder despite the pain of it. So she thought he was insane. He had no objections to that. He'd even help her out a little.
"Shit," she swore, drawing out the sibilant sound of the word. She walked past him, heading for the door.
Sands drew in a big breath. "I can't fucking see!" he screamed after her as she hurried out of the room.
When the door shut behind her, he started laughing again.
****
They left him alone.
At least, he was pretty sure he was alone. He held his breath for long periods of time, listening hard. If there was anyone in the room with him, they were doing a hell of a job staying quiet. So at last he relaxed a little, deciding that he was well and truly alone. This was good – it hurt too damn much to keep laughing.
He wondered how long he had been inside the ranchhouse. Not that he was worried. He only wanted to know for the sake of knowing. He had told El the truth. There was nothing they could do that would make him talk. He was not afraid of pain. The only thing that frightened him was the thought of losing his freedom. And if they did that, if they locked him up, they would have to keep him drugged all the time to prevent him from attacking them every time they opened the door to bring him food or question him. And if they had to drug him, they had already lost.
It was a no-win situation for them. Except they hadn't realized that yet. He knew they hadn't, because he was still alive.
Why the hell are you protecting him?
If only he knew. Self-sacrifice was an alien concept to Sands. He had never in his life done anything for someone else unless he could see something in it for himself. He had not been very old when he had realized the harsh nature of the world -- unless you looked out for yourself, you were going to get fucked. That was just the way of it.
The key was control. You had to have it, or you lost. Game over, go home, hope your family picks out a nice casket. When you were the one in control, you called all the shots. Everyone did just what you wanted them to do, while you stood at the center of it all and pulled the strings.
Which was right where Sands wanted to be.
So he looked out for himself. He had taken control, and he had vowed to never once let it go.
It had soon become obvious, though, that not everyone followed this basic prescription for life. So he did it for them. He kept the balance, when they could not. Sometimes this meant manufacturing a few tears when your childhood enemy died in an accident. Sometimes it meant assassinating a president. You just never knew what was needed.
But since losing his eyes, thoughts of balance had been far from his mind. He himself had been neatly cancelled out of the equation, crossed out by a ruthless hand. He didn't believe in God, but someone out there sure didn't want him in the game anymore. He had been cast out on his own, with no one to look out for except himself, just the way he had always wanted it.
He could remember, dimly, the day Ramirez had brought him to the FBI agent's house. Most of that day, after the gunfight, was a painful blur in his memory, but he did remember one very clear moment.
The kid had been holding his hand while he lay moaning and thrashing about with pain in Ramirez's guest bedroom. Even when the doctor's painkillers had finally taken hold, the kid had not let go. He had not cared. He had been heading swiftly toward unconsciousness then, and his only thought at the time had been one of deepest gratitude for the ignorance of oblivion.
But before he had passed out, he remembered the kid saying, "What will happen to him now?"
And Ramirez, who had been standing behind the kid, had said, "I guess that's up to him."
Had things worked out differently, he supposed he would have stayed at Ramirez's for a while. He would have used the time to figure out what he was going to do next. As it was, he had never gotten the chance. Because El had found him first.
El Mariachi, the man with no name. Oh, he knew El's name, but he would never use it. He respected the man too much for that.
El, the killer who only wanted to live in peace. He had lied to El when he said he didn't want to torture that soldier in Villa de Cos, but he done it to make El feel better.
Before El, he hadn't given a rat's ass what anyone thought of him, so long as they did what he wanted. Cucuy had been a perfect example. The man could have snapped him in half at any moment, but Sands had not been afraid of him. He had known the man hated him – calling someone like Cucuy a Mexi-can't was either very brave or very stupid -- but he hadn't cared. All that had mattered was that Cucuy did what Sands wanted him to do.
But for some stupid reason, he cared what El thought about him. He didn't want the mariachi to hate him. One thing he hadn't lied about -- El was the only friend he had ever known. He didn't want to lose that. It was stupid, and it was weak, and he sneered at himself for feeling that way, but the truth was, he didn't want to lose his friend.
It occurred to him that all those other relationships, the ones he had tried so hard to cultivate, the ones that had ultimately failed – it occurred to him that they had failed precisely because he had tried too hard. He had tried to be normal, to be someone he was not. But with El, he had never pretended. He had never been anyone but himself.
And El had accepted him. Reluctantly, to be sure, and with reservations, but it was still acceptance. To Sands, who had been laughed at and cast out all his life, that acceptance was everything.
The funny thing was, he couldn't pinpoint an exact moment when he had started trusting El. It had just…happened. He hadn't planned on it, or even wanted it. Hell, the last time he had trusted someone he had lost his eyes. He had never expected to trust anyone again.
But it had happened anyway. Without his permission, without his consent. One day he had woken up, and he had realized things had changed.
And the hell of it was, he hadn't minded.
If he had to choose a moment, though, a time when he had truly known for sure the changed nature of their relationship, he would say it was the night he played the guitar for El, the night before the shoot-out at Escalante's hacienda. He had sat there under the stars with the mariachi, and stupidly wished that the night would not end. Morning had meant going down to the hacienda and killing men. But under cover of darkness, on that long night, everything had seemed possible.
He snorted, and shifted a little in the chair, uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts. Hell, he knew it was stupid. He had known it even back then.
So why was he here now? Why hadn't he just told them what they wanted? Why was he protecting El? Any debts he owed the mariachi had been repaid, many times over. He had proved he could get by on his own, without El. There was nothing El had that he needed.
So why, then?
A bitter chuckle escaped him. The truth, no matter how unpleasant, was always unavoidable. Never more so than when you were left alone with it in a small room where you were chained to a chair, and where they had turned down the air conditioning so low you were shivering with cold.
He cared what happened to El.
He cared.
Now there was something to laugh about. But Sands found nothing humorous about it. Nothing at all.
The CIA wanted him dead. They thought he was insane, beyond rehabilitation, beyond redemption. As soon as they realized he would never tell them where El was, they would kill him. Possibly they would use him as bait to draw the mariachi out, but he didn't think they would even bother. They would simply shoot him in the back of the head and dump his body somewhere, just another unidentified murder victim for the Mexican police to find.
Sands did not want to die. He had never enjoyed life much, but it was the only life he had. He wasn't ready to give it up. Especially not now, when he had just found a reason to live that did not involve money or power. For the first time in his life, he cared about someone other than himself. He wanted to stick around and see what happened next.
When it all went down, he wanted to be there. Right beside El.
And as he thought this, something else occurred to him. He had forgiven El for Puerto Vallarta. He had forgiven the man a long time ago. He just hadn't wanted to admit it to himself.
He drew in a deep breath. They would be coming back soon. Sleep deprivation would be high on their list of torments, and since they couldn't be sure if he was sleeping or not, they would send someone in at various intervals. In all probability, Shorty or Boston was on his way here right now.
That was fine. Sands smiled. He was ready for them.
*****
Author's Note: That boy is incredibly stubborn, let me tell you! It's taken the better part of five days' work on this chapter to drag that confession from him. But now do you see what I meant in that author's note above? If you believe the slash version of the story, Sands' admission takes on a whole new meaning. So it's up to you guys, what you choose to believe. I will neither confirm nor deny. :-)