Chapter 17

Authors Note: I plan on showing the types of training that they have to go through in detail, but if I do that right now it's going to end up sounding really boring and all, besides the fact that I don't really know how many chapters are left. It could be anywhere from 3 to 9. Something like that.

Authors Note 2: To answer the anonymous review. . . thanks for the constructive criticism. I've kind of built Sands up to be a larger than life character, and I just wanted to thank you for bringing it back into perspective for me. Sable and I are going to try and address all of the things that you brought up. The mission so soon after he was injured, his feeling pain (but there are only so many times I can say it for him. Besides he battled it a few chapters ago and he won so. . .) but I guarantee he'll seem more 'human' after this. Well, as human as Sands wants to be. Lol

Authors Note 3: No disrespect toward Marlboro's. lol. Damn good cigarettes, so just giving the Disclaimer here.

Sable was beyond exhausted and it hadn't even been five hours like the first time they'd been initiated into the CIA. Her right arm ached from where she blocked an attack, she must have pulled a muscle somewhere along the line. No one knew about it except perhaps Sands who heard her quick intake of breath as it happened.

Sitting in the car before waiting to start the engine she wondered how best to bring up the topic she wanted to talk to him about. It didn't really matter, since when had she ever had trouble expressing her thoughts?

"You feelin' alright," he asked before she could say anything.

"Just tired, you?"

"I'm just great," Sands had his head leaned back against the seat. He was smoking a cigarette out the window while taking long, calm drags. "Arnoldo's one sly son of a bitch, isn't he."

"He's just worried," Sable put the key in the ignition. "No one's ever recovered so fast from an injury before. Even Jim who was shot in the side. . . remember? He was out for two weeks on medical leave."

"Jimmy. Ah yes, he soaked it up. The flowers, the candy, hallmark cards, all while laying on his ass getting used to hospital food."

"He was shot, Sands. That's a helluva lot less than what's happened to you."

"Bullshit. It all comes down to pain. How much more or less we can tolerate. You want to know how I am? It feels like burning coals where my eyes used to be, but I'm supposed to let them take me to a hospital room? Why? It's not going to do anything but drive me out of my mind."

"You're working and killing yourself. . ."

"Is keeping me alive."

Sable knew she was fighting a lost battle because she thought the same as he. It was because of Arnoldo's request that she try to get him to take it a little easier. She agreed, it was too soon for him to be even thinking about another mission, however, it brought her back to a time when the psychologists evaluated them round-table.

The question was simple: how would you choose to die?

Some of them said while sleeping, one man said he'd rather die during sex, because at least he'd die happy. Sable had said fighting, and Sands said with a gun in his hand and a smile on his face, no fuck-mook was going to kill him without a damn good fight first.

She was going to keep trying if only to see what kept him going, whether it was the job or whatever else it was that kept Agent Sheldon Jeffrey Sands from giving up. "Nobody's going to care whether you take a month off to recuperate or take a pain-killer."

"I will," Sands hesitated. "What they don't get is that this is all a mind-set. Pain, it's a current to the brain saying that something in the body is fucked up. What we learned how to do is short circuit the current, they think it's strange because they haven't learned how to yet."

"For small things like cuts, scratches, bullet wounds. . . but for that?"

"Why not? Sure it hurts, of course it hurt like fuckin' hell before, but now it's all dulling away. Slowly, crawling out until I'll be like the bartender with the eye-patch. You wouldn't know him, but he was one hell of a character."

"Alright," she leaned over and kissed him. Sable had been hesitant at first to display such open signs of affection, but Sands didn't seem to mind. Sometimes it seemed as if he was weighing the pros and cons, but he'd never pulled away or rejected it. He seemed thoughtful, sometimes, he'd go very still, but his famous callous comments remained unheard. "You'd tell me though if you were hurting, wouldn't you?"

"You think I'd tell anyone what I just told you," he raised an eyebrow.

"Point taken," dhe started the car and knew exactly what he was trying to avoid. She hated hospitals too, but even though he had a high tolerance for pain... that didn't make him invincible!

Sands could hear his father's voice in his mind telling him to toughen up. It echoed, the same words over and over again, 'pain doesn't mean anything unless you make it into something. Bear that, kid, there's more in store for ya in the future. Get used to it now and save yourself the trouble.'

The same feeling of not being good enough rose up in his throat strong enough to strangle him. He battled that away, nothing mattered now except the words. They were what kept death away in Mexico and what was keeping him from blowing Dawes' brains out now.

Perhaps he should have told someone about what had happened, he didn't because it was no less than any father would have done for a weak son. Did that mean he would do that to his son one day? Not a chance in hell, he wanted his kids to grow up and have the television child-hood. That is when he wanted them, as of right now he didn't really think about it at all.

He felt the car take the turn out of the parking lot and relaxed his muscles to ease the burning and the migraine. The concentration level needed to last through the day was phenomenal, with his pulse beating a steady rhythm in his mind he still managed to execute correct actions during the tests. He could do no less than that.

His strength was so depleted he had wanted to lay down in the middle of the room and just sleep for the next couple of weeks, but he had a point to prove and it would be a cold day in hell before he let them win.

It hadn't all been so bad, there were a couple of times he just thought about Sable and how much he wanted to lay her down in the middle of the room.

Take for example, the only reason her arm hurt now was because she'd taken a hit meant for him. Sands could sense movements in people near him and instinct took over for those further away. Sable had done more than her fair share and even though Sands had wanted to stop her, it would have been like trying to stop time.

She allowed him to use her as a sort of signal, she would move in certain ways to let him know without speaking where the attack was coming from. From her stance he got so much more than just what his sensitized senses told him. They were true partners in every sense of the word, exactly as Arnoldo must have planned it.

Arnoldo, Sands flicked the cigarette out the car window and lit another one. He was doing his damndest to get them to quit and say they wanted a break. It wasn't going to happen. If this was the way Arnoldo was going to try and make Sands give up, he had another thing coming. If he couldn't walk to prove it he'd belly-crawl across a bed of nails.

He also knew that Arnoldo had brought Sable into this as a different sort of test. There would be one exercise in which he would have to make a decision or vice-versa, he didn't know what the choices would be but he'd go down trying to save her.

She was the first person he truly cared about, the only one who'd ever understood the smallest smidgen of what he was. To let something happen to someone so rare. . . not on his watch.

Sable glanced over and saw a pensive look on his face. She wondered what he was thinking about, but then wondered what the CIA had in store for them. Even Arnoldo had a boss and essentially they were all pieces. Like Sands' famous saying, 'I throw shapes, I set them up and watch them fall.'

Well they were all game pieces on a giant chessboard ready to be sacrificed for the king and queen. The knights were the first to go, then the little people were next. She and Sands must be rooks because they were both still alive and fighting.

"Pizza?" he asked breaking her reverie.

"Yeah, toppings?"

"Broccoli." She said.

"Pepperoni." He announced.

"Pepperoni?" she asked.

"Broccoli?" he looked so disgusted it made her laugh.

"Allergic to vegetables?"

"You have something against meat?"

"Half and half then," she acquiesced.

"Fine," he sighed, "waste of a good half a pizza."

"Hey, watch it or next time I'll get pineapple. . ."

"Vegetarian," he snorted, "freakin' rabbit food."

". . . with ham," she finished.

"Yeah, yeah." He flicked the second cigarette out the window and then regardless of the fact she was driving kissed her with the smoke still in his mouth. He really wanted her to pull over, tired or not, and have her straddle him propped against the dashboard.

"Pure tobacco," she said approvingly a stream of smoke escaping from her mouth. It had been awhile from the last time she'd had a cigarette.

"None other, I don't go for that store bought shit." He sighed knowing that the fantasy was just that.

"Marlboro's are okay."

"Expensive as hell though. Five-twenty a pack now."

"Fifteen dollars a day then," she rolled her eyes, they used to be three dollars.

"Want one?" he offered a little bag with about sixty hand rolled cigarettes inside.

"Sure," they were all going to die eventually, why not die for doing something they liked.

"Anytime you want one. . . I have a heap of'em back at the house."

"Thanks." She accepted the light and took a shallow drag to get her lungs used to the smoke and beautiful taste. It was times like that, when he paused, that made her uneasy. He made it seem like courtesy was something alien to him, had he never had anyone consider him first? He was so hesitant, as if expecting instant rejection.

"They as good as you thought?"

"Better," Sable agreed letting the crisp flavor and smell go through her system.

Sands lit up another one and grinned satisfied, "I still think pepperoni's better."

"You would," Sable retorted as she rolled the window the rest of the way down.