Blind Man's Bluff

Disclaimer: I'm just a struggling writer. I don't own El and Sands. Please don't sue.

Rating: R for violence and language

Summary: El offers Sands a choice.

Author's Note: Cyberhugs to my beta reader, Melody. And to everyone who has written to me or reviewed, you guys are the best. I love you all. Your kind words keep me writing.

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Fortunately for you, nothing you did is worth dying over. You have only seen things.

I'm his daughter.

We have to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Sands jerked awake with a cry. A weak, disgusting whimper escaped him before he could stop it. The sound was loud in the still room, making him flinch.

He sat up in bed, leaning against the headboard. Christ, it had been four years. But still he dreamed about it.

He supposed he was entitled to the dream. After all, that day had irrevocably changed his life. There was not going to be any do-over for him, or any rewinding. No Control-Alt-Delete to reboot. He was going to be blind for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be.

Still, it pissed him off to keep dreaming about it.

When his racing heart had slowed back to its normal rhythm, he got out of bed and walked into the bathroom. He had been staying in this particular hotel for a week now, and it was time to move on. This would be his last day here.

He turned on the shower. He stripped down, folding his clothes carefully and laying them on the counter beside the sink. Before losing his eyes – in what he thought of as his former life -- he had never been one to treat his clothes carelessly, or let them drop to the floor and wrinkle, but now he was more particular than ever. It was a pain in the ass to stand there feeling for a sleeve or zipper. Better to take the time to fold things and know where everything was, than to stand there fumbling around like an idiot.

Naked, he stood in front of the tub, holding his hand under the flow of water, testing the temperature.

The shoot-out with El had been a month ago.

And El was in town.

He couldn't be one hundred percent sure, of course. But he had heard the rumors, and yesterday, leaving the hotel, he had heard the jingle of chains. Only El Mariachi would continue to wear such a ludicrous outfit when he was supposed to be on the hunt.

The water was as hot as it was going to get. Sands stepped under the spray and yanked the flimsy curtain closed.

He would check out from the hotel this morning and hitch a ride somewhere. He was thinking of Mexico City. Someplace big enough to get lost in. He was never going to be anonymous, but in a big city like that he could stay hidden for a decent amount of time. And he didn't think cities were El's milieu; the mariachi would prefer small dusty towns. Mexico City wouldn't stop El from hunting him down, but it might slow El enough to give him some breathing room.

He was sick and tired of running. In his former life he had always been a man of action, restless and full of energy. He had hated to stay in one place for too long, and start to feel settled. He had liked the challenge of the unfamiliar. He had liked to move about, both physically and psychically. It had seemed important not to be caught standing still.

But there came a time when a man could not run anymore. And Sands was fast reaching that point. He was almost ready to just sit down in the dust and let El find him.

Almost. Not quite, though.

The hot water pounded on his shoulders, loosening the knots of tension that were always there. He could never relax now, never breathe deep. His sleep was light and uneven; the faintest noise woke him and sent him scrambling for his guns. He could never let down his guard, because he was never for a moment allowed to forget that he was eternally in the dark.

He wondered if El was pissed about what had happened in the bar. What El didn't know was that Bill had indeed made a second phone call. Sands wasn't supposed to have known about that call, though. But in fact he had heard every word of it, while standing outside the backroom where Bill had been known to do business in human goods, especially little girls.

I already called some of your buddies, but he's good. He'll probably take them down. But you come, a little bit later, and you can take him by surprise. He won't be expecting that. It's the best chance you'll ever get.

He should have killed the douchebag a long time ago, he thought. And normally he would have, but he had grown lazy. It had been easier to keep working with Bill than to establish a brand-new business relationship with someone else. And Bill, like everyone else in the world, had looked at him and seen only a blind man. Bill had underestimated him.

So now Bill was dead.

He was just reaching for the shampoo when he heard the sound. He froze, one hand still outstretched.

Someone was in his room.

"Shit," he swore. The nearest gun was in the drawer of the nightstand. Another was under his pillow. The other two were under the bed itself. He was utterly defenseless now, naked and dripping wet. Even his sunglasses were gone, sitting innocently on top of the clothes piled on the counter.

Panic swooped over his head, wanting to settle on his shoulders. He took an involuntary step backward, trying to blend in with the tile.

The bathroom door was flung open. Sands braced himself for the searing impact of bullets.

Instead the shower curtain was ripped off the rings. Hands grabbed him and he found himself thrown out of the shower and onto the floor. His head connected with the toilet, and sparks of light danced in front of him, the only light he ever saw anymore.

The blow left him dazed. He could not move as the hands took hold of him again. This time he was tossed out into the bedroom. He landed hard, smacking his chin on the floor and tasting blood. Before he could get to his feet, someone kicked him in the ribs, sending him rolling across the carpet.

He fetched up against the bed. He was grabbed again, and thrown against the wall. He fell to the floor, part of his brain still trying frantically to understand what had happened to his nice hot shower.

Heavy footsteps crossed the room. They did not jingle.

A large hand wrapped itself in his wet hair and pulled, forcing him up on his knees. "Where is El Mariachi?" asked a deep voice. "He has not found you yet?"

"What?" Sands asked.

The hand let go of his hair. An instant later he was picked up and thrown again.

He crashed into the nightstand beside the bed and crumpled to the floor. The lamp shattered. The clock radio began to play a tinny song. The phone handset flew off the hook, and the dial tone sounded loud in his ear. Every inch of him hurt, and he moaned.

"I have not come all this way for nothing," said the deep voice. It did not belong to the owner of the heavy footsteps, Sands realized. There were two men in the room. The speaker, and the big brute currently playing Frisbee with his body.

The brute had to walk around the bed to get to him. On his hands and knees, Sands began to crawl toward the bed, reaching desperately for the guns he had placed under it last night before falling asleep.

"Two for the price of one," said the deep voice. It spoke in perfectly understandable Spanish, but it had an accent Sands could not place. "El Mariachi is following you. We know he is here, in town. I can wait for him to find you, and then I will take him. Or, you can tell me where he is and save yourself much pain."

A boot stomped on his hand. He cried out, unable to help it.

Something thin and plastic wrapped itself around his throat. It felt like the phone cord. He clawed at his neck, scrambling to get his fingers under the cord. The brute pulled hard, yanking his head back.

Can't breathe can't breathe! There was no fighting off the panic this time. Sands fought and struggled, but he could not loosen the cord. Dull roaring filled his ears, and his hands dropped to his sides.

Just before he passed out, the brute relaxed the cord. He slumped, coughing and gasping for air.

"El Mariachi," said the deep voice. "Tell me where to find him."

"Fuck you," Sands groaned.

The cord pulled itself tight again, cutting off his air. He threw himself backward, but the brute was there, preventing him from going anywhere. He flailed out with a loose fist, trying to sock the guy in the crotch, but there was no strength behind the blow, and the brute sidestepped it easily.

Unconsciousness was near when the cord loosened again. He sagged forward and would have fallen, but the brute gripped his shoulder with one large hand.

"This is your last chance," said the deep voice.

Every breath burned in his throat. Sands blessed each one.

"Very well," said the deep voice.

The cord tightened, strangling him, cutting into his throat. He could not fight anymore, he had no strength he couldn't breathe he was going to die after all this time he was going to die.

And then his fading brain heard a sound. Silenced gunshots. The sweetest sound there was.

The brute fell. He let go of the phone cord, and it went slack.

Sands collapsed.

He lay facedown where he fell, unable to move. His entire body throbbed with pain. It hurt to breathe, but he could not stop gasping, desperate for more. Air had never tasted so good.

Footsteps crossed the room. Chains jangled. Sands groaned.

It really was perfect, he thought miserably. Here he was, half-dead thanks to some nameless goon. He was sans sunglasses, wet hair clinging to his cheek and the phone cord still wrapped loosely about his neck. What a picture this must make.

"I told you I would find you again," El said.

"Congratulations," he started to say. But his voice had apparently decided to take a vacation. All that came out was a hoarse croak. Pain convulsed his throat, and he groaned again.

"Aren't you going to thank me?" El asked.

Sands held up his middle finger.

El chuckled. There was no humor in that laugh. "Do you want to stand up? There, you see? I give you the chance to die on your feet."

No, El, I don't see. I don't see a fucking thing anymore, thanks very much.

In response, he held up the same finger. His left hand hurt where the brute had stomped on it. He wondered if anything was broken.

"Why did they want to know where I was?" El asked.

So El had missed the first part of the conversation. That was great. The mariachi probably thought he had been all heroic with his silence, protecting El. When in truth he had simply been too dazed by it all to have an answer. The last thing he had ever expected was intelligent cartel. The mere idea of them waiting to grab both their enemies at once would have been laughable before today.

Yet it had happened. They had tried to use him to get to El, and they had nearly succeeded.

Shit. He owed his life to El. Well, that was just fucking great.

"Answer me." El put a bullet into the floor near his cheek. Sands jumped, and broke into a fit of coughing.

The coughs tore at his chest. Yep, he had definitely busted something on one of his meetings with the wall. He started to curl onto his side, and then froze.

Oh, this just got better and better. He was still buck naked.

When the coughing had subsided, he reached out with his right hand, seeking the bed. His fingers brushed something soft, and he seized it and pulled. It was the sheet, not the bedspread, but it would do.

El laughed again as he wrapped the sheet around himself and slowly sat up. He slapped the phone cord away and winced as it hit the floor with a cold smack. He thought about standing up, then decided that was a bad idea. Better stay on the floor, he thought. Less chance of disgracing himself by fainting, or anything like that.

"I expected more from you," El said. "Letting yourself be caught like this." He made a tsk-tsk noise, and Sands could just imagine him waggling a finger in scolding. "It's very sloppy."

Sands said nothing. It hurt to swallow. His throat was already swelling. In another few minutes he would be fighting for air again.

"Or maybe you wanted to be caught," El said. "Is that it?"

Shoot me or shut the fuck up, El. He began to feel among the wreckage that had come from the nightstand. His seeking fingers found the phone, now gone silent. The clock radio, still playing shitty music.

"What are you doing?" El demanded. He sounded tense, only a moment away from pulling the trigger.

Sands shot him the finger for the third time. He couldn't believe El thought he was looking for a gun. Yeah, El. You keep your guns in a guitar case. I keep mine in my handy-dandy clock radio. Fuck off, why don't you?

At last he found what he was looking for. The stub of pencil and the little pad of paper that had been left on the nightstand like an afterthought. No embossed Holiday Inn stationery here. The pad was the size of a wallet.

He wrote carefully, aware that his handwriting had deteriorated badly since losing his sight. No longer able to see the page, he found the lines he wrote invariably curved downward, and the margins of the paper came upon him without warning. Still, this message was easy enough.

"Fuck off."

El uttered that unamused laugh again. "And miss all this fun?"

"What do you want?" he wrote. He was pissed off that he couldn't talk. His throat had closed down to a pinhole. Every breath hurt, from his sprung ribs to the fire in his throat.

All that running and hiding, and it had all come down to this. This pathetic, wasted end. Sitting naked and wet on the floor of a hotel room in a town he didn't even know the name of. What a joke. If he had had a gun at that moment he wouldn't have even bothered shooting El. He would have shot himself, out of pure disgust.

El had to come closer to read the words this time, and Sands stiffened involuntarily. He didn't want the mariachi coming any closer thank you very much.

"You know what I want," El said.

He did know. El wanted to kill him. He couldn't understand why El hadn't already done it.

"Why did they want to know about me?" El asked again. "Why did they ask you?"

Sands gave an elaborate, "beats me" shrug. He scooted backward, making sure the sheet stayed over his lap, until he felt the wall at his back. Now that the adrenaline of the attack was wearing off, he could feel the various aches and pains of his body. He was going to be bruised all over, he thought glumly.

El Mariachi sat on the bed across from him. This was a little too close for his liking, but on the plus side, it meant his death would be clean. Even El couldn't miss such a point-blank shot. "Do you know who these men were?"

He shook his head, then wished he hadn't. He winced, and touched his fingers to his throat.

Damn. It was worse than he had thought. The flesh there was hot and swollen, except for a deep groove where the cord had been. He was bleeding too, although not badly. He dropped his hand back to his lap. He wondered if he looked as terrible as he felt.

On the heels of that thought, he suddenly wondered if El was sparing his life out of pity.

He picked up the pencil and scribbled. "Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?"

The bedsprings squeaked as El stood up. Chains jangled. And then the muzzle of a gun was pressed to his forehead. "If that's what you want," El said.

Sands reacted instinctively. He reached up and batted the gun away. The roar as it went off deafened him, but the bullet buried itself in the wall, not in his skull.

"I guess you do still wish to live," El remarked calmly. He sat on the bed again.

Puzzled, Sands stayed where he was. El had pulled the trigger only after he had slapped the gun away from his head. He didn't get what the mariachi was playing at. Either El wanted to kill him, or El didn't. There wasn't much gray area in the middle there, yet that was where El seemed to be coming from these days. It didn't make any sense.

He ripped the top page off the notepad and turned it over. He wrote, "What is going on here?"

"You tell me," El invited.

Sands flipped him off.

"All right," El said. "Do you know who those men were?"

That was the second time El had asked. Again, he shook his head.

"They were Colombian," El said. "I have seen this man's face before. In the newspaper." When he spoke next, it was with a cold smile. "You see, you cannot accuse me of not keeping up with current events any more."

Good for you, fucker. Wanna explain why two Colombians are dead in my hotel room?

"This man is head of security for a large Colombian cartel. One that has connections to several cartels here in Mexico." El did not sound like he was smiling anymore. "You have been noticed, my friend. By men in high places."

Sands was too startled to react at first. He had hoped he was doing some serious damage to the cartels, but here was the proof. He had brought them to the brink of ruin, and the bigwigs in Colombia – where the real money lay – were not happy about that. So someone had taken out a contract on him, having decided that the Mexicans were not up to the task.

Then he frowned. Had El just called him, "my friend?"

"You don't seem very pleased by this. I would have thought this news would make you happy."

Sure. I'm real happy, fuckmook. Men with enough money and resources to find me even if I run to fucking Afghanistan want me dead. Yeah, play that funky music white boy, because I'm ready to start dancing in the streets.

Shit. He was in serious trouble here. He would be dead right now if it wasn't for El Mariachi.

"I had not realized," El said, "how badly you had hurt them."

The mariachi sounded genuinely respectful. Again, Sands frowned. He was not used to men talking to him that way. In his experience they were either craven cowards doing whatever he wanted so he wouldn't kill them, or they were threatening him.

"Perhaps I have been wrong about you," El said. "I had thought it was a mistake to let you live. I thought you would only continue to try to hurt my country and its people, the way you did with the coup. Instead, I find you helping them, more even than their own government does."

Bet you're wishing El Presidente had died after all, hey, El?

"So I make you an offer. One time only. Will you listen?"

Unable to spit the insults he wanted, he resorted to flipping El the bird again. Of course he was going to listen. He was blind and couldn't talk. What else could he do except sit here and listen?

"Good. Now, you still wish to bring them all down? What happened today has not made you think twice about your chosen path?"

God, who wrote El's lines, he wondered. Sometimes he could almost forget El was a mariachi, and then the man said something like that. Only a man who was still a poet at heart would blather on about chosen paths.

In a strange way he barely understood, it was comforting. Maybe El wasn't just a cold killer. Maybe there was more to the man than guns in guitar cases. And that other side of the man, the poet, was the one who had spoken to him with respect. The poet was the one who had forbidden Lorenzo from killing him a year ago. The poet was the one making the offer now, giving him a chance to keep defying the odds and survive.

He wrote, "What do you want?"

"I want you to destroy them," El said. "All of them."

He couldn't help it. He scrawled, "So leave me alone."

"You need help," El said.

Infuriated, Sands crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it at El.

"I have no intention of joining you," El said. "I have taken my revenge. I have no desire to spill more blood."

Sure you don't. Just my blood. When it's convenient for you.

"But today proves that you can no longer take your vengeance on your own. You need help."

Sands wished El would stop saying it like that. He had always hated that phrase. Usually someone said it to him with a look of mixed disgust and pity, and almost always in reference to his mental state.

"So this is my offer. You continue your crusade against the cartels. And I will protect you."

This so surprised him that he actually managed to produce a laugh. Which turned out to be a bad idea. Pain sank its claws into his throat, and he doubled over, gasping for breath.

El said nothing during all this. When he was able to sit up again, he wrote quickly on the notepad. "What makes you think I won't kill you?"

"You might," El said. "But I am prepared to take that chance."

So I'm not the only one with a deathwish, right, El? Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

He shook his head. No deal.

"Think carefully before you decide," El said. Metal snicked, and he knew El was toying with the gun that was still aimed at his head.

The last of his humor died away. El was giving him a choice, he realized. He could accept El's offer and go on about his business, with the mariachi always lurking in the background as a shadowy protector. Or he could say no, and El would just shoot him right here and now.

It wasn't much of a choice. He did hate his life and what he had become, but that life was not to be thrown away. It was all he had. He wasn't ready to give it up just yet.

So he would say yes. What else could he do? He would accept the deal, and as a reward he would get to live. Always with El watching him, but, as El had proven today, sometimes that could turn out to be a good thing.

With El at his back, he could do more. Take more risks. He needed a pair of eyes. He would let El do the legwork for him, and then he would do the killing. Maybe El was on his guard now, but the poet inside wanted to talk to someone. Sooner or later El would relax, and let him in. And the moment that happened, Sands would be there, taking advantage of the opportunity. He had never missed yet on a chance to use someone for his own benefit. He would not miss now.

The big question was, what was El getting out of this arrangement? Sands didn't believe for a second that El was so concerned about the people of Mexico. No, El wanted this for purely selfish reasons. The problem was, he couldn't figure out what those reasons were. El was perfectly capable of killing, so there was no question of him wanting to live vicariously. And he didn't strike Sands as the morbid type who enjoyed death, so it wasn't that El wanted to watch him in action. So what was it?

His curiosity was too much. He wrote, "What's in it for you?" and held up the notepad.

El made an enigmatic sound. Chains jingled, and the bedsprings squeaked as he stood up. "Make your choice. Yes or no?

Sands pursed his lips. He supposed he ought to have known El would not answer him.

He held out his hand and nodded.

"That is not good enough," El said. "I want to hear you say it."

Sands made an angry gesture at his throat.

"Then write it," El said implacably.

Oh you fucker, you're going down. One day. You'll start to trust me, and then we'll see. Then you'll regret this moment. You'll wish you'd never even heard of me.

He flipped over the page so he had a fresh piece of paper. He wrote, "Yes," in big block letters. He ripped the page free and held it out.

El took it. He heard paper being folded and then stuffed into a pocket. "Good," El said. "Now, there is cartel all over this town. We are leaving."

Sands gritted his teeth. If he had been capable of speaking, he would retorted that he had already planned to do just that.

"Get up," El said. "We're leaving."

With a sinking heart, Sands realized that he had no choice. He could refuse, but then El would shoot him.

Defiance would have to wait. For now, he was at El's mercy. That was all right. He was the one who had defined creative sportsmanship. He knew how to play, and he knew how and when to change the rules. He would play El's little game, and when El least expected it, he was going to blow El's fucking head off.

He stood up, clutching the sheet about his waist with one hand. He hurt all over. Inside the bathroom, the shower was still running. Ridiculously, he longed to step under the spray again and wash the tension out of his body.

It was too bad water couldn't wash away hatred, too.

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