Fic: "Tenebroso/Tenebrism"
Summary: Metaphor of metaphors; all is metaphor. Or, l-dhenson fools around with her palette.
Pairing: Ostensibly none, but if you look at it out of the corner of your eye, possibly Sands/El.
Feedback: Always a thrill.
Disclaimer: Everybody herein belongs to Mr. Rodriguez.
***
***
He'd stood on the chilly cemetery grounds and listened to the sound of mourners around him, while the sky added its filmy veil of rain to their tears. Poor Frankheim, two decades in the Agency; an old target catching up with him by some freak of luck, or so the theory went. The priest had droned on about divine plans and earthly existence and the promise of peace. Sands had not paid the old man much attention.
He'd been staring instead at the polished granite headstone with its fresh inscription, concrete proof that a man now lay dead. Reading the pale incised dates over and over, particularly the second one, and he'd thought, with a little jolt of awe: I made this.
If only they'd known how divine the plan had been. And it had only been his first.
It would not be his last.
***
The evening before his flight out to Mexico, he'd leaned against the balcony railing of his tiny emptied apartment, cigarette smoke making lazy coils in the humid air, and watched the stormclouds roll in. He'd known, gazing at that overcast sky, that things had to be better down south, because where the sun was brightest, there the deepest shadows also were.
***
From across the cantina table, thumbs hooked in his belt, he'd narrowed his eyes behind smoked lenses, surveying the man seated opposite. He'd gone to a lot of trouble to track down this Mariachi, and the fuckmook, as it turned out, didn't even carry a gun. Just a home-grown guitar with its tangle of steel strings, dull ashy wood and a style that was decidedly...rustic.
"Nice tune," he'd said.
Maybe it was possible to just serenade Marquez to death.
***
Then there'd been the moment, standing on the sidewalk listening to the heartbeat of absolute silence between sudden disconnection and sudden dialtone, when he'd discovered what walking on ice in the middle of Mexico was like.
And it hadn't been at all the glossy, pristine sort you got courtesy of Currier and Ives.
It had been the opaque sort that spread itself over the surface of stagnant lakes, that reflected nothing but thunderheads above and revealed nothing of the dark waters below. The sort that crackled ominously underfoot, thinner than the pressure of a single fleeing step, more fragile than the heat of a single held breath.
And then he'd fallen through, ice shards drawing blood all the way down, and he'd found out just how dark those waters really were.
***
He'd always seen the world in shades of gray.
Now he saw the world in shades of black.
***
Chaotic swirl of street traffic in his ears; he hadn't known stucco could echo. He tossed his head in a futile attempt to dislodge the sounds. There were, and he could say this with unequivocal certainty, just too many fucking people in existence today.
Kid--where was the kid?
Where was the man?
He tightened his grip on the .22. It felt warm from its long concealment and slightly sticky where the kid had held it, but mostly what it felt was like a toy.
No matter which way he turned, he knew he was looking down the barrel of a gun.
***
Screaming.
This was more like it. He thought he'd plugged the bastard in the ankle, couldn't be positive, seemed to do the trick though. If he were to look now (not that he was going to), he'd see eyes fixed on him, pupils dilated in complete terror.
Eyes. He flicked the muzzle sideways. Right around--there--
***
He heard her body slump to the hard-packed earth, winced at the sharp jab in his left arm, tasted grit on his teeth from the dust that must have floated up.
For a moment he regretted not having aimed a little higher; but then, he thought, he already knew what color her heart was.
***
Stepping through the hospital doors, he took two paces and nearly crumpled to his knees, because he was feeling the noon heat on the back of his neck for the first time in two weeks and it didn't change a thing.
Oh god. Oh god, not a thing.
Of course it wouldn't, but there had been that little insidious half-heard voice that whispered while he'd slept, and told him that all it took to end the nightmare was to find his way back into the day.
He'd made it out of the hospital, but he was staring at the inside of a tomb.
***
He presses his back against the stone wall, because some things don't flow around corners.
He never sets foot inside the church, three blocks left and four blocks right from his stifling hotel room, but he comes to its grounds on occasion; it's familiar and undisturbed. He scoped out the edifice and plaza once before, preparatory to setting traps. That was a long time ago.
There is a disturbance today.
Some things don't flow around corners, but this rippling curl of melody does. He can still hear it from where he stands, clear as day, guitar and sure hands spilling music like twilight out onto the street, pooling in the cobblestones. It's a nice tune, the kind of thing somebody's brother might have taught them; once before, an even longer time ago.
Back against the stone wall, he lets rough masonry bite into his palms and listens to individual plucked notes falling like pearls onto velvet, glimmering in the faint, dusk-cool breeze.
He doesn't know if he'll turn the corner, but there's something almost lulling in the air all around him. It feels a lot like the calm before a storm. It feels a little like the suggestion of peace.
Maybe sometimes, he thinks, it pays to listen to holy men.