Chapter 12
Remembering
Disclaimer: I don't own El and Sands, much to my disappointment. They belong to Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: R for language and sexual situations.
Summary: Road trip
Author's Note: Slash warning ahead.
This chapter refers heavily to events that take place in chapter 6 of After the Dust Has Cleared. You might want to quickly skim that one, but I'm providing a brief summary here, too.
In that chapter of ATDHC Sands figures out that El has been taking him in circles, and he confronts El, physically attacking him and threatening him with a gun, demanding answers. He wants to know where they are going. El will not tell him, and a short but furious battle ensues for the gun. El ends up winning, and Sands becomes confused in the chaos, and finds himself trapped in the corner of the room, with nowhere to go. He asks El with genuine sincerity why El wants to take him along on the quest to destroy the cartel, and for the first time, El responds to him with sincerity of his own.
And thus, a friendship is born...
****
He wakes with a lazy yawn. He reaches his arms over his head, stretching.
He sits up in bed, and smiles. It is early evening, sunset. He has slept the afternoon through, a siesta during the hottest part of the day. The hotel room is clean, and smells of the flowers that sit on a round table beside the door. The westering sun streams in through the windows.
Sands stands in front of one of the windows. When he hears El wake, he turns around. The light behind him is so bright, El cannot see his expression. "About time you got up, Sleeping Beauty."
El smiles. He rakes the hair back from his face. "What time is it?"
"Tequila time," Sands says. He is outlined in light from the window. He walks toward the bed, and El. "Let's go. I'm starving."
"All right," El says. He stands up. "Give me a moment."
Sands smirks. He is still walking toward the bed. "Isn't that my line?" He finally steps out of the bright sunlight, and El sees him, and gasps.
Sands has his eyes.
El stares at him in shock. "What? How?"
The agent frowns. "El? You been smoking something?"
It is not possible. And suddenly El knows that he is dreaming. This moment is what-might-have-been, if he had been smart enough and brave enough and strong enough, if he had stopped the coup from ever happening. This is what could have been, if he had gone to Sands immediately after their meeting in the cantina -- like he had wanted -- and confronted the CIA agent.
He is filled with bittersweet longing. If only…
Sands looks downright puzzled now. "Earth to El?" He waves a hand in front of El's face. "You there?"
Sands has beautiful eyes. Deep-set, dark. Eyes made for passion. Eyes that smolder with fury, dance with laughter, and spark with spirit.
El can barely contain the pain inside him. He reaches out and takes Sands' face between his hands. Sands closes his eyes, smiling slightly, expecting a kiss. El leans forward, using his hands to tilt Sands' head down, so he can gently – so gently! – kiss those closed eyelids. He will never get to do this in the waking world, and while part of him thrills at this chance, mostly he just mourns.
He realizes with shock that he is almost crying.
Sands knows it too. He looks up, pulling free of El's hands. "What's with you?" he asks. "Because I gotta tell you, whatever drugs you took, we want some."
We.
The fantasy of the dream darkens slightly. Even now, Sands is still insane. El sorrows to realize it, but he cannot claim to be too surprised. The madness is part of who Sands is, and that will never change.
"In fact," Sands continues, "I think it's past time you woke up, El. Don't you?"
El stares at him, not wanting to let this moment go. This last chance for him to look into Sands' eyes.
Then it is too late. He is awake.
****
He woke to disorientation and alarm. He had no idea where he was.
But when he sat up and looked around, he breathed easier. He knew this room. It was just that he had not been here in almost a year.
This was his bedroom, in his house, in Villa de Cos.
They had arrived this morning, to find the house more or less intact. The villagers had preserved it against the day when El Mariachi might return. Much of the damage from the shoot-out had been repaired, but the broken furniture had not been replaced, and there were still bullet holes in the doorframes, floor and walls.
El rose from the bed. It was shortly after one o'clock in the morning, still early by the hours he had kept as a younger man. He opened the bedroom door and glanced down the hall; he was not surprised to see the door to Sands' room standing open.
He found the agent in the kitchen. Sands had opened the back door, and he was sitting on the stoop, in the exact place where once a dead soldier had lain. He had his back to the jamb, one knee drawn up. A lit cigarette dangled between the first two fingers of his right hand, which rested on his knee. "El," he said. "Come to kiss me good night?"
The tone of his voice told El everything he needed to know. "I had a dream," he said. "I needed some air."
"Ah," Sands said, nodding sagely. "Well," he patted the floor next to him, knocking ash to the floor from the cigarette, "pull up a threshold. Have a seat."
El sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor. Outside, night insects chirped and hummed as they went about their business. "What did you dream about?"
"Nothing," Sands said airily. "Same old shit, different day."
This told El nothing. There were probably a hundred horrors that chased themselves through Sands' dreams. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Do I want to talk about it? Well, let me think." Sands took a deep drag of his cigarette. "Did I ever tell you what the last thing I ever saw was?"
"Maybe," El said, knowing now what Sands had dreamed about. He supposed it was entirely possible that Sands had told him, the night they had gotten drunk in this very kitchen, but he didn't really remember everything they had talked about.
"It was that fucking drill," Sands said, his voice laced with bitterness. Although he had obviously been sleeping, if he had had a nightmare, he had removed the silk blindfold and was wearing his sunglasses again. He shook his head. "You know, I always have to be different. Have to be the freak. I can't even go blind like a normal person. At least everyone else gets to keep their eyes."
El didn't know what to say to this.
"I wouldn't mind so much, I don't think," Sands said, "if it wasn't for that goddamn drill. Why did that have to be the last thing I saw? I wish it had been someone's face. Even that fucking butcher Guevara. Just…someone."
"Do you ever see my face?" El asked.
Sands snorted. "Far too often."
Stung, El snapped, "It was only a question."
"Don't ask the question if you aren't going to like the answer," Sands retorted. "Even you ought to know that by now, El."
"I guess that's one of those things I'll never learn because I'm too stupid," El shot back. He had endured all manner of insults about his intelligence over the months spent with Sands, but he had grown very tired of them.
"You got that right," Sands said. He finished his cigarette, passed it to his left hand, and stubbed it out on the concrete of the stoop.
"Fuck you," El said. It was hardly witty, but he was too angry to come up with anything better.
And to his utter surprise, Sands did not bite back. He just sighed. "You know," he drawled, "I am a real asshole." He gave a very unamused laugh.
"You are," El agreed, but without any rancor.
"Gosh, thanks," Sands said. He tipped his head back against the doorframe.
"But I'm still here," El said.
Sands was silent for a long time. Then he nodded. "You're still here," he said.
****
Two days later they arrived in Durango.
They drove out to the ranchhouse. El parked the car on the side of the road and used a pair of bolt cutters to break the chain holding the gate closed. He threw the halves of the chain to one side, opened the gate, and got back in the car. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Oh, I'm sure," Sands said.
The ranchhouse was deserted. One of the windows was broken, but only one. A notice had been tacked to the door. "Property of U.S. Government," read the sign. "All Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted." The warning was in both English and Spanish.
El read the words aloud, then seized the notice and tore it off the door. It was not paper, but a thin sheet of plastic that was stiff in his hands. "Fuck you all," he said, and let the sign fall to the porch.
He started to open the door, but Sands stopped him with a hand on his elbow. "Wait."
That innocent touch was enough to freeze El in his tracks. Despite himself, a flare of hope went up in his heart.
Sands crouched down and felt for the sign. When his fingers brushed the smooth plastic, he slid it forward until it was aligned with the toes of his boots. He stood up.
El watched this curiously, not saying anything.
Sands took two deliberate steps backward. Then he quite calmly unzipped his fly and began to piss on the sign.
Nodding with satisfaction, El waited for him to finish.
"Feel free," Sands said with a grin.
"I will let you have this honor," El replied.
"Gracias," Sands said, smirking.
****
Inside the house, nothing had changed. The large wooden dining room table was still there, where Belinda Harrison had once sat and written out a check for ten thousand American dollars, made payable to Jorge Ramirez. El sat at the table and re-enacted the scene with her, to Sands' dry amusement.
But the humor went away as they made their way to the room in the back of the house. Everything in here was unchanged, as well. Just those two metal chairs, and the table. The air conditioning in the house was not on, and it was stiflingly hot in here, as it was in all the rooms, but in El's memory this room was freezing, and always would be. The flesh on his arms broke out in goosebumps.
Sands sat in the foremost chair and reached behind him, gripping the bar that crossed the back of the chair. To look at him, he might have been cuffed there again. El did not like the sight.
"We should go," he said gruffly, rubbing at his arms.
Sands tilted his head back. He let go of the chair and sighed. "You know," he said, "sitting here, I learned a lot of things about myself."
El frowned. He had no illusions about what those things were – probably none of them had been good.
Sands reached up with trembling hands and removed his sunglasses. He held them in his left hand, and let the fingertips of his right hand brush his cheek, and then higher. Quietly, he told El what had happened to him when he had been here last, what the CIA agent he had named Boston had done to him.
Shaking himself with rage and horror, El closed his eyes. If I had known… He would never forget the sight of Sands chained to that chair, blood covering his face, and that exhausted smile of relief upon hearing El's voice. If I had known then what he just told me, I would have killed that man myself with my bare hands.
He wanted to cross the room and take Sands into his arms. But he did not dare.
He said, "I wish they were all here, right now in this room, lined up. All the people who have hurt you. So I could look them in the eye before I killed them."
Sands opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. He did this twice before finally saying, "Gosh, El. That's either very sweet of you, or very disturbing. I think I like it."
He put on his sunglasses and stood up. "Let's go."
****
Another day saw them in a small town. They were merely passing through, when abruptly Sands cocked his head. "Church bells," he said.
El had been in a road-induced trance, and he started with surprise. "What?"
Then he heard them himself. Church bells, all right. And suddenly he realized that this town looked familiar.
"Do you remember?" Sands asked.
El nodded. He did. And even though it was only five o'clock in the afternoon, when he saw the road that led to the small motel, he turned down it.
The motel was the same. After a moment of thought, El remembered the room they had stayed in, and he requested the same one. The man at the desk glared at him sullenly, as if selecting a specific roomkey from the lot of them involved extra work.
He took the key and gave the man his most winning smile.
The room did not look any different. Same horrible carpet, same bed with the sagging mattress. The bullethole where Sands had shot into the floor remained.
El shook his head. They were repeating history.
Sands took a few steps into the room, then stopped. "Deja vu, hey El?"
"Not quite," El said wryly, shutting the door. He sat on the plastic chair at the plastic table. "As I recall, I made it about two steps into the room when you attacked me."
"Yeah, those were the days, huh?" Sands took another step forward. He held his right hand out, searching for the bed he knew had to be there. When he found it, he turned around and sat on the edge. "I hated you," he said. He shook his head, chuckling. "God, how I hated you."
"Why?" El asked. "I never did anything to you."
"Oh, really?" Sands drawled. "Let's see. By that point you had thrown me off the porch, handcuffed me to the car, broken my fingers and--"
"Actually," El said, feeling immensely ashamed of himself, "that happened in here."
Sands thought about this for a moment. "So it did," he said. "I had forgotten that part." He waggled his fingers. "All better now, though."
"I thought you were very brave to force a confrontation," El said. He marveled that they were sitting here like this, talking about such an emotionally charged event as if it was nothing. He was struck by a sudden thought. "Knowing you now, I am surprised that you waited so long to do it."
"Oh, I wanted to do it that first day," Sands said. "I just wasn't strong enough. Ever had the eyes ripped out of your skull? Trust me, it takes time to recover from that."
This was one of those things that there was no appropriate response to. El just made a noncommittal sound.
"I was really going to kill you that day, you know," Sands said, almost conversationally.
El knew that. He had never doubted it. In hindsight, it had been madness to give Sands a gun that day. "Would you ever kill me now?"
Sands considered the question. "Do you want me to lie, or do you want me tell the truth?"
Troubled that there was a distinction to be made, El said, "I want you to be honest with me." They had begun being honest in this room, after all. If they were going to repeat history, they might as well go all the way.
"Then the answer is, I don't know."
"You don't know?" He was appalled. And hurt. "After all we have been through, your honest answer is that you don't know?"
"Sure," Sands said brightly, rather too brightly for El's taste.
"Why?" he demanded.
Sands spoke in the kind of voice he would use on a small, stupid child. "Well, because I'm insane."
El flinched as though he had been slapped. "That is not an answer," he said. "That is an excuse."
Sands' jaw tightened in anger. "Yeah? What would you know about it? I mean, I know you're not exactly the poster boy for mental health yourself, but you strike me as still having all your marbles."
El did not understand most of this, but he understood enough. "I am perfectly sane, thank you very much."
And then he suddenly remembered the day of Fideo's betrayal. Sands standing in the living room, dry-firing the gun at Marco's corpse. Shouting at El to stay back, don't fucking move! When really he hadn't been talking to El at all.
"You're not in control then, are you?" he asked.
"What?" Sands asked, very cold.
"Your madness. What you call the voice. It takes over." Suddenly he thought he understood. "That is why you almost killed me on the day of...that day."
Sands said nothing, but he was clearly unhappy with this line of conversation.
"Why didn't you?" El asked, wondering why he had never thought about this before. He had been unconscious then; his life had hung in the balance without him even knowing it. There had been no chance to talk Sands down. Which meant it had to have been something inside Sands that had kept him from pulling the trigger.
El felt encouraged by this. If it was true – and it had to be – it meant that Sands could fight back when the madness was in control. And he could win that battle.
"You were bleeding," Sands said curtly.
It didn't sound like much of a reason to El, but he just shrugged. The reasons of a madman would only make sense to the insane. All that mattered was that Sands had decided to spare El at that particular moment.
"So you took control again," he said.
Sands heaved a sigh. "All right, look. That voice – my insanity – whatever you want to call it – the whole reason it showed up in the first place was so that I wouldn't have to be there while my uncle was fucking me. I would just...go away. So it got to take control then.
"And it likes to be in control. It doesn't like to give that up.
"Which is why it's so important for me to have control," Sands said, his voice growing clipped and cold. "Because when I don't, it does. And bad things happen then to the people around me. Ask Belini, or some poor waitress who had the bad luck to spill coffee on the wrong person at the wrong time. Oh wait, you can't ask them, because they're dead."
El felt weak with realization. "All that talk about keeping the balance," he breathed. "What you really mean is that you need to keep the balance in your own head."
Sands sat back and spread his hands. "Ladies and gentlemen, he can be taught."
El scowled. He didn't want to think anymore about things like insanity and men who would hurt young children.
To divert his mind from these thoughts, he tried to remember the conversation he and Sands had shared in this room, two years ago. He looked at the corner of the room, and it took no effort at all to remember how Sands had sat there on the floor, his injured hand held to his chest, his entire body tensed for battle. Sands had demanded to know where they were going.
Mexico City. I have contacts there. We need information if we are to take on the cartel.
It was the first full truth he had told Sands. The first time he had been entirely honest with the man. And it had opened the door, he realized now, for the start of their friendship. The trust had begun that very day.
"Mexico City," he mused aloud. "To see a man for information."
"You know, I thought you were taking me to the cartel," Sands said. "So they could finish what Barillo started." He gave El a tight, vaguely apologetic smile. "What the hell. I didn't know you then."
"I would have killed you myself first," El said.
"Well I know that now," Sands said. He rummaged in his pockets, looking for a cigarette, but came up empty. "Damnit."
That truth about their destination, El thought now, had been the key. Everything else that had followed had come directly from that moment. He had trusted Sands with the truth, and in doing so, he had given them both a goal. More importantly, he had created a shared future for them.
Why do you want me with you? Is this your idea of revenge? Or is it a twisted joke, sending the blind man to face the evil drug cartel?
I want you with me because you are a gunfighter.
Except that wasn't the answer. It hadn't been the answer even then. Even back then, he had felt this mysterious attraction to Sands, that connection which went far deeper than the physical. Every scrap of logic had screamed at him to go after Escalante by himself, right after the coup. But he hadn't done it. He had refused to even entertain the idea of going after the cartel without Sands. And he had tried time and again to understand it, to justify his actions to himself, yet he had never been able to find the reason why.
Vengeance is not always a bad thing, Agent Sands.
This isn't vengeance. You only think it is. Destroying the cartels won't give me my sight back. It won't bring your Carolina back, or your daughter.
"You saw right through me," El said, amazed all over again at Sands' brilliant ability to figure people out. "You did in the cantina, when we first met, and you did it again in here."
" 'This isn't vengeance,'" Sands said with a smile. "Yeah, I remember."
"I will take my meaning wherever I can find it," El said softly, repeating the words he had said two years ago.
He rose to his feet. He walked across the room and sat on the bed beside Sands. "I have found my meaning," he said.
He reached up and moved Sands' hair aside, so he could kiss the agent's neck, in that spot just below his ear, the spot that always made Sands breathless.
As it did now. But El stopped after that first kiss.
Please. Please let us have this.
Sands did not move for a long moment. Then he slowly turned his head so he faced El. "Me," he said flatly.
El's left hand was still holding Sands' hair back. Now he let his hand trail over Sands' shoulder, down his back, to stop near his hip. "You," he said.
You. Both of you. All of you. Whatever I can get. But you, only you.
Sands leaned forward, just enough so he could kiss El. It was hardly more than a brief moment of pressure from his lips, but to El it was like glimpsing heaven.
Sands sat back. "I don't have meaning in my life," he said.
"That's all right," El said. "We'll keep looking."
"We?" Sands asked. And it was not skepticism El heard in his voice. It was yearning.
"I'm not going anywhere," El said. "I'm still here."
"Still standing," Sands whispered. He began to lean in again, slowly.
"Still," El breathed.
****
And this time, it was right.
******