To Know Thy Enemy
Disclaimer: Still with the not-owning them.
Rating: PG-13 for mild violence
Summary: Meet the oddest Odd Couple that has ever been
Author's Note: As most of you are mentioning in your reviews, this fic is an attempt to turn the normal OUATIM dynamic on its head. Rather than having El be the one to bring the light back to Sands, I wanted to try and switch their roles. What happens if El is the one to fall into the darkness? Can Sands bring him back? Can El even be saved at all? This story is going into scary dark places, and I have no idea how it will all turn out. I'm sure the end will surprise all of us, though.
****
Within an hour, Sands knew he had made a very bad decision.
El had nixed the idea of going to Mexico City. He would not say where they were going, however. The only thing Sands had been able to determine, judging by the angle of the sun, was that they were heading east.
He sat in the passenger seat of El's car, aching all over and silently fuming. It would be at least a day before he could speak, and until then he was essentially helpless. He could not make his demands known, for he only had four pieces of paper left in the notepad from the hotel, and he knew damn well El would not get him another one. He had to ration the paper, and only use it for important announcements.
He counted himself lucky that El had allowed him to keep his guns. Strangely enough, the mariachi had not seemed interested at all as he had dressed and armed himself. For all he knew El had stood in the corner and stared avidly, but he was almost certain that El had turned his back and given him some privacy.
That was just one more thing about El that did not make sense. The mariachi could be hard and bitter, but then he could show a surprising flash of humanity, like turning his back so Sands could get dressed. It was just enough to keep Sands confused, and he didn't like that. He liked things to be black and white. No gray areas. It was too easy to get lost in the mist and fog of gray.
So now here they were. El had a convertible, of all things. The wind whipped his hair wildly about his head, so that he had been forced to tie it back. He had no idea where they were going, he could barely breathe, and his chauffeur was a mariachi with a deathwish.
Well, he had had worse days.
****
The hotel they checked into was a joke. The room's bouquet was a gagging combination of piss, vomit, and unwashed bodies, and he could hear roaches scuttling along the baseboards. Sands stood just inside the door and vowed he would not even sit on the bed. There was no way in hell he was going to relax his guard one iota, not with those fuckers running around and two inviting holes in his face.
El set the guitar case on the floor. "Midnight," he said. "Or sometime after. Men will come to rob me. If they are cartel, then we will know we were followed."
Sands frowned. El had begun by using the singular, but he had ended by saying "we." Freudian slip, or deliberate? He made a circular motion with his hand, a "yeah, and?" gesture.
"And if they are not cartel, they will be no less dead," El said.
Sands gave him a cold smile. On some things at least, he and El Mariachi saw eye to eye.
"They were in the lobby," El said. "Watching me check in." Sands had been waiting outside in the car, so the hotel staff would only think one person would be using the room. "They will be here later tonight."
All right, all right. He had already heard that part. He tuned out the rest of El's words, instead listening hard to the room itself. Objects gave off echoes, he had learned. He could sense where furniture lurked, chair legs that wanted to trip him up and table corners that wanted to gouge chunks of flesh from his hips. Rooms were minefields to the blind, and only the strong could maneuver through them and come through unscathed.
El walked away. Sands counted the number of steps El took. Eight. Then the tenor of the footsteps changed, as El's feet left the carpet and found the tile of the bathroom. A click of a light switch. A door was shut.
Fuck. He was alone. Well, he would be damned if he stood here all night like an idiot. Carrying the bag that contained his few possessions, he followed El's path. He kept his left hand held out, half-wincing with the anticipation of contact – he didn't think his fingers were broken from where the brute had stepped on his hand, but they hurt like a bastard.
Two steps into the room he sensed something on the left. He bent his knees and leaned to the left, his fingers brushing the air. They encountered something soft and scratchy. A bedspread.
He straightened up and drifted to the left. He walked forward again, sliding his left leg along the bed, using it for reference. Another two steps took him to the end of the bed. Open space loomed ahead, full of any number of nasty traps just waiting gleefully for him. A snag in the carpet, a low dresser eager to slam into his knee.
He kept walking. Three steps later his reaching fingertips encountered the wall. Slide to the right. One more step and he was in front of the bathroom door. The water was running.
He turned around and walked back the way he had come. But he already knew what he was going to find.
There was only one bed.
Well, fuck it. It wasn't like he had planned to sleep, anyway.
The bathroom door opened and El came out. The smell of soap wafted out into the room, fought a brief but losing battle against the reek of the former occupants, and expired.
El walked forward, right toward him. Instinctively Sands recoiled, one hand dropping to the gun at his hip.
El kept on walking, brushing past him. Something rustled, and something else thumped. Two clicks and then an unidentifiable sound.
A twang of a guitar string.
And then he knew. El had opened the guitar case. And the guitar inside.
He wondered what secrets were hidden inside that guitar. He knew he would never find out. If El caught him touching it, he would be lucky to come away with a broken neck.
El began arming himself. These sounds Sands was familiar with. He listened, growing steadily more pissed. El had obviously decided to ignore him, which was fine with him, except that he had no idea where he was, or what the room looked like. He had not found a chair or anywhere to sit, or anything except the bed with its scratchy, stinky bedspread.
Fine. So these, then were the rules. No talking. No acknowledging the other person's presence. He could live with those rules.
But rules were made to be broken. And Sands had no intention of following them any longer than he needed to. Carefully he turned around. He took five steps and turned right. His feet hit the tile and he closed the door behind him.
The doorknob was battered and dented. But the lock worked. Sands turned it with a vicious twist of his wrist, and went to sit on the edge of the tub.
****
Sometime later, a knock sounded on the door. He had heard the jangling sounds of El's approach, so he was not surprised.
"Sands."
Go piss out the window. You're not coming in here.
"They're here."
Oh, yeah. The thieves.
He stood up and drew his guns. He opened the door.
"Three--" El started to say. And then the door leading outside was kicked open. Three men entered in a flurry of guns and footsteps.
Sands reacted without thinking. His hands had hold of his guns and were firing before his brain could impose conscious will on them.
By then it was too late anyway. Three bodies hit the floor in separate meaty thuds. He smelled gunpowder in an acrid overlay to the stink of the room.
"-- of them," El finished. "Hmm." He made a noncommittal noise that made Sands feel stupidly like laughing. If he hadn't been fighting for every breath through the swelled pipe of his throat, he might even have indulged that need.
"Now we will never know who they represented," El said.
This was one of the stupidest things Sands had ever heard. If those men were cartel it would be obvious. Their clothing, their jewelry, their weapons, all these things and more would give them away. And if El could not see those things with his eyes, then suddenly it became debatable who was the blind one in the room.
With a sigh of disgust, he pushed past El, holstering his guns as he went.
"You only missed once," El offered. "If you want to know."
Sands did not even turn around. He held up his middle finger over his shoulder and kept right on walking.
Two steps away from the bodies and the open door, sudden sound warned him. One of the men was still alive.
El heard it too. From behind him the mariachi drew a gun, but Sands was closer, and he was faster. One shot, and the man was dead.
"You are very fast," El said.
No shit, he wanted to say. He knelt beside the nearest body and began rifling its pockets.
He knew right away the men were not cartel. Their hands were rough, and their clothes were polyester. Not the sort of men who made their dough selling drugs to American kids.
That didn't stop him from taking their money. He shoved the bills in his pockets and turned around to face El.
The mariachi said, "We are leaving."
Sands nodded. And then, because he couldn't resist, he pulled out the notepad and scribbled, "You should get your money back."
To his surprise, El chuckled. And it sounded real enough. "You think so?"
Sands grinned. He sure as hell wouldn't pay for a full night in this shithole.
Chains jingled as El crossed the room. "Forget it." He did not sound amused now. "Get your things."
Sands shrugged. Whatever.
****
Once again El did not tell him their destination. And without the sun to guide him, he had no idea what direction they were traveling in.
He thought El would stop again and try their luck at a different motel. But El did not stop. The man was a machine, Sands had to admit. Despite El's lack of sleep, the car did not waver in its straight path.
Wait, thinking about sleep was no good. He had to stifle a yawn, and that hurt. A lot.
They drove through the night. The top was up, but Sands rolled his window halfway down so he could get some air. He was uncomfortable sitting so close next to El Mariachi for so long. Over the years he had gotten plenty of rides from strangers, and he had encountered more than his share of psychos, but this was different. This was someone he knew, someone from his past. Under any other set of circumstances, he might even have been expected to make conversation.
Not that they had anything to talk about. He had long ago realized that he and El were more alike than either of them wanted to admit, but that did not make them friends. They were not even allies, despite the deal they had struck. He didn't know what to call their twisted relationship, actually. It seemed to defy regular words.
He wondered what exactly El thought was going to happen. In the past he had carefully arranged things to work in his favor. He had never gone into a gunfight without plenty of advance preparation. That was not going to change. The only thing he could see changing was that he would have to be twice as vigilant, now that he had El at his back. He did not trust El, not one bit.
The road unwound before them. Hours passed. The air coming through the window grew cooler and then bottomed out. El stopped to get gas. They stopped again for burgers and fries, which they ate in the car. Sands was hungry, but it hurt to eat, and he had to choke the food down. Yet he made himself eat it all. With El in the driver's seat, there was no telling when the next pit stop would be.
He leaned his head back on the seat and played a game with himself called Which One? As in, which body part did he wish Barillo had taken instead of his eyes? What could he afford to give up and still function?
The list was surprisingly long. Or maybe he just had a different perspective on things, now that he had experienced permanent loss of a part of himself. Fingers and toes were expendable. A foot was no big loss, a hand was bad. Ears were no problem, same with a nose. A tongue was an issue. He had thought long and hard before deciding that he would give up his balls but not his dick. After all, it wasn't like he was getting laid a lot these days, and he had never had any interest in having kids, so sperm wasn't necessary. His dick now…no question there.
He was pondering the consequences of losing a kidney when El surprised him by saying, "Why didn't you go back to America?"
He turned to El and emphatically flipped him off, making sure his finger pointed to his damaged throat. You want to talk now? Great sense of timing you've got there, El. I bet you're a premature ejaculator, too.
"I think it is because you could not go back. You burned your bridges with the coup, didn't you?" El said casually.
Sands fought the urge to punch El in the mouth. El was driving, and they were going fast. It would not be good to make them get in a wreck.
"I think your superiors didn't like you," El said. "That is why they sent you to my country. You are a spy. And you are good at what you do. Why wouldn't they send you to a country where there is a need for men like you?" The mariachi sounded thoughtful, as though he was driving alone in his car and thinking out loud. "They are scared of you, is what I think."
You don't know the half of it, El. But here's something else you don't know. Fuck with the United States and you had better have one hell of a retirement plan. Because those guys don't forgive, and they don't forget.
"So they sent you to Mexico so you would not embarrass them in a country where they needed men of silence. And still you embarrassed them, through your involvement with the coup. So they left you down here, blind and without money or means to make a living."
Sands clenched his jaw so hard his entire face hurt. If El said one more word, he really was going to deck him.
"Your Central Intelligence Agency is not very intelligent," El said.
Sands froze, his fist already in the act of leaving his lap. What the fuck?
"They obviously underestimated you," El said.
Slightly mollified by this, Sands let his hand drop back to his lap and unclenched his fist.
"I won't make that same mistake," El said. Until then he had been speaking lightly. That casual tone obviously feigned but he had still been doing a good job of pretending not to care. Now however, he sounded cold and every bit a killer.
Sands pulled out the notepad and tore off a piece of paper. In big letters he wrote, "Good idea." He reached across the seat and slapped the paper into El's face.
The car swerved to the left as El reflexively recoiled, jerking the steering wheel to one side. Paper rattled as he swiped it off his face and crumpled it in one fist.
When the blow came, Sands was ready. He heard the rustle of fabric and the displacement of air. He caught El's fist and slammed the mariachi's arm downward. El's wrist struck the gearshift, and this time the car gave a great lurch across the road.
"Good idea," Sands said, in a husky voice that barely resembled his own, "but you already blew it." He let go of El's fist. Whatever happened next, he had won. If El hit him, he would just laugh, confident in the knowledge that he knew how to push the mariachi's buttons. And if El let him be, he would still laugh, knowing he had just proven his point.
El straightened out the car. For a moment he did not respond, and Sands wondered how close El's hand was to his gun right now. Then finally the mariachi said, "If you do anything like that again I will kill you."
It hurt like hell, but Sands just threw back his head and laughed.
****
When the sun came up, he figured out that they were going north. They stopped for gas, and for breakfast. Once again they ate in the car. Burritos this time. El crumpled up the paper wrappers and threw them out the window, then uttered a ringing belch. In the front seat, Sands laughed. He couldn't help it. He had always had a weakness for bathroom humor.
He hoped they were nearing the endpoint of their journey. He could swear the upholstery of the seat cushion was tattooed on his ass by now. The various aches and pains he was sporting after yesterday's Frisbee game were now quite loud and angry, insisting that he do something about them. Tops on the wishlist was a bottle of tequila, but at this point he would settle for a long hot bath.
They had been silent for several hours, but now El spoke up again. "If someone held a gun to your head and said they would kill you unless you begged for your life, would you do it?"
Christ, where did El come up with these things? He looked over at the mariachi and arched an eyebrow. Would you?
"I would not," El said. "I would not dishonor myself in that way."
Somehow Sands had expected this. "I would," he said. His voice was a hoarse croak, but at least it was cooperating.
"Why?" El asked. He sounded surprised.
He swallowed hard. When he was a kid he had had strep throat so bad they had taken out his tonsils, but that pain was like stubbing his toe compared to the hurt he felt now. "Because then I would live."
"With the loss of your self-respect," El said.
"No." He shook his head. "Not a loss. A victory. I would live, and I would hunt that person down. I would shoot out his kneecaps and I would make him beg. And when he did, I would shoot him in the head."
God, his throat felt sandblasted. His voice faded in and out. "Creative sportsmanship, El. Don't play by their rules. That's the secret to winning the game."
"Is that how you see life? As a game?" El asked. The mariachi actually seemed to be enjoying their conversation. Sands suddenly found himself wondering when was the last time El had held a conversation with anyone that had consisted of anything more than, "Yes, I want fries with that."
"Yes and no," he said. "Games imply the existence of rules. I don't believe in rules." More to the point, he didn't believe in rules in association with himself. Rules existed to keep everyone else in check. They did not affect him.
"But I do believe in winning. Rig the game. Cheat. Lie. Steal. Kill. Do whatever it takes." He turned to face El, so the mariachi could see the blank sunglasses that had replaced his eyes. "Stay alive."
El said nothing to this. Sands said, "What is going on here? You haven't been chasing me for a year just so you can be my bodyguard."
"I was going to kill you," El allowed. He did not sound particularly enthusiastic about that, Sands noted. Which meant nothing, but it still made him frown. He didn't know if it was the poet or the killer who had made that comment.
"But not anymore?" he asked.
"Not yet," El said.
"Why?" he asked.
"I have my reasons," El said.
Sands scowled. He had used that same bullshit answer on El a year ago, when they had first met again in the hotel courtyard. El had asked him why he was still in Mexico.
"If you think I'm going to be your puppet," he warned.
"I know you will not be," El said mildly. "But I also know that you will do what I tell you."
"Really?" His voice cracked and disappeared halfway through the word, but he knew El had understood him anyway.
"Because if you do not," El said, "I will kill you. And you wish to live too much to allow that."
"Maybe I'm getting tired of living," Sands said.
"You have a gun," El said. "If that is true, no one is stopping you."
Despite himself, his upper lip curled in scorn. Suicide had never been an option, even during those blacker-than-black days after the coup when he had first begun to realize what it meant to be blind.
"We will go where I say," El said. "And you will do as I say."
"I'm not your fucking slave," Sands snarled. The hoarseness of his voice actually made him sound more threatening, but he knew that didn't matter. El seemed to respect him, but only to a certain point.
El, he suddenly realized, was using him. The same way he himself had used everyone for his entire life. Others had tried before, wanting to manipulate him the way he manipulated them, but no one had succeeded. He had always seen it coming a mile ahead, and twisted things around so the plan backfired, so the person who had meant to trap him found themselves caught in their own snare.
Not this time. He had walked right into the trap this time, and the hell of it was, he had done it with his eyes open. Figuratively speaking, of course. He had known good and well what El meant when the offer was made, and he had still accepted.
If someone held a gun to your head and said they would kill you unless you begged for you life, would you do it?
Well, there was a gun aimed at his head now, all right. And like he had told El, he would do what was necessary to survive. So he would play El's game. He would let El use him, and in return he would take what protection El offered.
And he would lay his own plans. Because life really was a game. El was winning for now, but no winning streak lasted forever. One day El would roll the dice and they would come up snake eyes.
And on that day, El would look up and see two eyes staring down at him, black bullet eyes. They would be the last things he ever saw.
Sands meant to make sure of it.
*****
