It All Starts With Sunglasses

Disclaimer: They belong to Robert Rodriguez, not me.

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: Sands reminisces and El returns

Author's Note: I just want to make it official, so everyone can see it. I am an idiot. I forgot to thank my beta reader Melody in the last chapter. I also forgot to say to everyone how wonderful your reviews are, and how delighted I am that everyone seems to be liking this story. So without further ado...

Thanks, Melody. You're the greatest.

And you guys rock.

****

No matter how many times it happened, getting shot never became any easier. And this time, Sands was beginning to think, it was going to kill him.

What are you doing here? El had asked, and he had wanted to laugh. He had thought it was perfectly obvious what he was doing here. Like an animal sensing the end, he had come here to die.

He was pissed off that El was not dead. He had spent a long time rigging that stone just right. It had always worked before. But there was no chance he could do it again. He didn't think he had the strength for it now, and it was for sure that he wasn't able to go hunting for another decent-sized chunk of stone.

"Fuck!" The word was out before he could stop it. El had taken one of his guns. He had scoured every inch of the kitchen, and he was still missing the gun the mariachi had grabbed from him.

"Okay, okay, fine." He staggered out of the kitchen, bumping along the wall with his shoulder. Not for guidance -- he knew the layout of the house by heart – but so he wouldn't fall down.

He had made something of a nest in the back bedroom. A mattress with slightly less funk on it than all the others. Something that might have been a sheet – or maybe a tablecloth. A pistol shoved under the mattress. A knife with a hilt that, he had decided after much examination, bore a stylized depiction of a naked woman. An empty bottle of tequila. Cigarettes, not the hand-rolled ones he preferred, but shitty-tasting storebought coffin nails. A few books of matches. And a flashlight, one of those big Magna-Lite jobs. He had no idea if it worked or not. What mattered was the satisfying crunching sound it would make when it impacted someone's skull.

He lowered himself onto the mattress, his breath catching in an involuntary gasp of pain. Christ, it hurt. Over the years he had gotten pretty good at digging out bullets, but this one had so far defied all his attempts at removal. It remained inside. Infection had set in, and his time was growing shorter with every hour.

What a way to go, he thought bitterly. How inglorious. How wasteful. He had hoped he could goad El into pulling the trigger, so at least he could say he had died at the hands of someone worth remembering. Instead some ignorant cartel fucker had gotten lucky, and now here he was.

Well, he supposed he should be grateful to have survived this long. Certainly he would not have predicted it.

A thin smile crossed his face. Sands never allowed himself to think about the past, but today was a special occasion. He was dying, after all. He could permit himself this one indulgence.

He reached up with a hand that would not stop shaking and traced the curved contours of his sunglasses. Because that was where it had all started. With sunglasses.

****

"Mexico?" His cocky grin slipped a little. He took off his sunglasses so he could see the speaker better. "Is this a joke?"

"It's no joke, Sheldon. You're being debriefed at noon, and you'll be on a plane this evening. By this time tomorrow you'll be in Mexico."

****

Okay, maybe not that far back. Fast forward some.

****

He always wore sunglasses when he met a contact. Belini, Cucuy, the latest rat in his latest scheme, even his own supervisors. If he felt comfortable at the meeting, he would take them off. If not, well, they stayed on.

He had been working with Belini almost from day one. A recommendation by the last officer to have this post. He had met with Belini only because he was bored and needed something to do that day. Belini was slimy and he thought he was funny when in fact he was just downright aggravating, but he was good at what he did. Five minutes of serious questioning had been all it took to convince Sands to keep Belini as a contact. He despised the greasy-haired fucker, but when Sands wanted information, he went to Belini first.

Belini had found Cucuy. Cucuy in turn had led to all kinds of illegal activities, and that was when the dough had started pouring in. Payoffs, bribes, and blackmail. Sands hid behind a fake mustache and the shadowy threat of the almighty U.S. government, and he grew steadily more wealthy and confident.

And then the day job suddenly turned interesting. Surveilling the Barillo cartel finally yielded some results. News of a coup. In the space of five seconds, Sands' life in Mexico went from being boring-as-hell to very exciting. These were interesting times he was living in, all right. Once or twice he thought about approaching Barillo over coffee, or lunch, so they could discuss things like absolute power and balance. He decided he could not let an opportunity like this pass him by. He would allow the coup to happen, but he would add his own twist to it.

And those twenty million pesos? They had his name written all over them.

But he needed an inside man. Someone to keep Marquez from taking control. Cucuy was too obvious – the man wouldn't know subtle if it walked up and smacked him on the head. So he turned to Belini, and Belini, as always, delivered the goods.

El Mariachi. Does it have a name? Information on El was surprisingly abundant. Most of it was utter bullshit, of course, but a few nuggets of fact could be gleaned from the crap if a man knew how to look for them. Annoyingly enough, however, El's real name was not one of those facts.

Whatever his name was, El Mariachi turned out to be a hard man to predict. Sands prided himself on being able to figure out a man within five minutes of meeting him. He had thought he had El figured out. When El had not kept his side of the bargain, he had simply assumed the mariachi was dead. It had never occurred to him that El would reject his proposal and turn on him.

In hindsight, a lot of things had never occurred to him. And now, three years later, he was still paying the price for his stupidity, his overconfidence, his arrogant belief that he could set it all in motion and then just sit back and watch it happen.

Instead, he had watched as it all fell apart around him, and there had been nothing he could do about it. El had disappeared and Cucuy had betrayed him to the cartel and his own fucking government had abandoned him. He had arranged the meeting at La Vaca Volanda, but he had never really thought it would go down.

Of course, he really had met someone there that day. Only it hadn't been his own people. It had been Ajedrez. He had looked up at her, still on that goddamn cell phone, and he had known. Just one look, and he had known it was all over.

In some countries, spies were given cyanide capsules so they could commit suicide if they were caught. The civilized United States of America gave its officers cell phones.

So, Barillo. Not a pleasant memory, but one that he faced daily. You have only seen things.

Dr. Guevara. Bright shiny metal. Scarlet blood veiling everything. Surprisingly little pain.

And then, nothing. Darkness. Unending darkness.

After that things were fractured. Time was lost. To this day he didn't know how much. Weeks, to be sure. Maybe even months.

He remembered the kid. The taxi. The gunfight. Ajedrez again. See something you like? The kid yet again. Ramirez, and a barking dog? Maybe. That part was fuzzy.

After that? Darkness and pain. Voices. Sometimes soft, sometimes screaming. He had a very clear memory of cool water running over his hands, but he had no context for it, so he wondered if it was a dream. He remembered hearing a song on the radio, and reaching for his belt so he could get dressed, and then everything went blank again. It was funny how he could remember simple things so easily, but the big things were lost.

He had no idea how long he had been recovering. He knew he had come close to dying. Very close. Close enough that he knew what he was missing, and some days the yearning for it almost eclipsed his even-stronger desire to live.

Then one day it had occurred to him that he could get the fuckers who had done this to him. He could get them all. He had thought about this for a while, then given a mental shrug. Why not? He had nothing better to do. And he owed them for what they had done to him. He had risen from his bed, strapped on his guns, and he had walked out of the house. He had thumbed a ride and given the driver a destination, and so the hunt had begun.

Luck, resourcefulness, and the surprising willingness of people to help had kept him alive this far. There was little love for the cartels among the common folk of Mexico. He had gotten accurate tips from any number of sources throughout the years. He had lost track of the towns he had visited, the bars he had slouched in, the beers he had drunk.

He had no idea how many men he had killed in the last three years.

And now one of them had killed him. He had been shot before, of course, but he had finally met the bullet with his name on it.

He curled onto his side, bringing up his knees to accommodate the pain in his stomach. It was too bad the tequila was gone. It might have made dying a little bit easier.

****

When he woke up, someone was in the room with him. He grabbed for his guns and tried to sit up, but the guns were gone and the fever was back, and he fell back onto the mattress. He tried to speak, and a shivering fit swept over him, making his teeth chatter.

The footsteps drew nearer. With every other one he heard the merry jingle of chains.

A hand crashed down on his forehead. He jerked his head to one side. "Fuck off," he snarled, hating the way his voice shook.

"You need help," said El Mariachi.

"I don't need your help," he spat. He gave a titanic heave and managed to sit up. Cold fire licked along his abdomen from the bullet wound, and he gasped.

El pushed him back down. He lashed out, shoving the mariachi's arm away. He knew he was being childish, but he didn't care. No way, no way in hell was he accepting help from the great El Mariachi.

Another voice said, "How long has he been like this?"

"Four days," El said.

The mariachi and the doctor continued to talk about him. Sands lay still, gritted his teeth, and slowly slid his hand down so he could reach the gun hidden under the mattress.

Another set of footsteps approached. Hoping that El would turn to look at the doctor, Sands made his move. His hand plunged under the mattress.

And came up empty. The gun and knife were both gone. Even the flashlight with its satisfying heft was gone.

A howl of frustrated fury burst from his lips. "You bastard!" He launched himself at El, but the mariachi caught him easily and wrestled him back down to the mattress.

"Stop," El said. "You will only hurt yourself."

"Oh, that's rich," Sands panted. "Coming from the guy who tried to kill me this morning." His weapons were gone. El had a tight grip on his wrists. But nothing prevented him from using his feet. With El's voice and the dip in the mattress from El's weight to guide him, he knew just where to aim, too.

El uttered a hoarse croak as Sands' boot caught him square in the crotch. He fell back, releasing Sands as he went.

Sands didn't wait to find out what the mariachi would do next. He lashed out with one fist, then the other. Only his left hand made contact – the right had been too low, for he had overestimated how far El had fallen. But that was all right. All he needed was one moment of touch to tell him where El was.

He struck again, this time with the heel of his right hand. A simple tactic, but one with amazing results. Break El's nose and drive the bone up into El's brain, and ladies and gentlemen, we have one very dead mariachi.

The flat of his hand smacked against El's nose, but before he could drive his arm up and deliver the killing thrust, El jerked his head to one side. At the same time, a fist caught him in the side. Pain exploded in his abdomen, and he cried out with surprise and hurt.

They fell together, each of them breathing hard with pain and exertion. For a moment Sands lay where he was, his right arm draped across El's chest, his right leg over El's. The mariachi's body was warm and solid beneath him, a strange sensation after three years of solitude.

Then El twitched, and Sands remembered suddenly where he was. He tried to roll off the mariachi, but his body would not obey him. Chills shuddered through him, and he could not stop shaking. Against his will his hand clutched at El, trying to draw the mariachi closer. He needed the warmth of El's body. Christ, he was so cold!

El said something, but the mariachi's voice came from very far away. Hands took hold of his shoulders, and he was lifted and then laid back down on the mattress. And just like that, the chills vanished and he was dumped in the desert under a blazing sun. The heat was everything, the heat was the whole world. The mattress was scratchy even through his clothes, making his skin itch and tingle.

He hurt so much. He just wanted to die. It had been three years. Surely he was allowed to die now.

A hand brushed the hair off his forehead. The voice spoke again, words he did not comprehend. Only the tone of the voice reached him, quiet and steady.

Another voice came. This one was higher-pitched, older but kinder. The deep voice answered, and this time there was a steely note in its words.

The owner of the old voice might have said something in response, but Sands never knew it. He was floating among the darkness.

****

"Why do you want to save him?" asked the doctor.

"I want him healthy when I kill him," El said without hesitation.

Then he frowned.

That was the right answer. It was the only answer. So why did it feel so wrong?

******

Author's Note: So you may have noticed that these particular versions of El and Sands are pretty dark. To be honest, I didn't expect this, nor did I predict the dark turn the story will take in chapter 5. I really have no idea where this is going. I think this is a new world's record – only three chapters in, and already the boys have control. I'm just along for the ride.

So far, it's a pretty bumpy ride.