Sons of the Earth

by Eatsscissors

Mexican bars, you meet the strangest people in them. Or in the gunfights directly outside of them. Crossover with 'The Bourne Supremacy'.

TITLE: Sons of the Earth

AUTHOR: Mari

EMAIL:

RATING: Hard PG-13/light R.

FANDOMS/SPOILERS: Once Upon a Time in Mexico and The Bourne Supremacy.

DISCLAIMER: Robert Rodriguez and various others that are not me.

DISTRIBUTION: I'd like to know where it's going.

FEEDBACK: I am a crack moppet. Also, deeply insecure about the characterization of Jason, so throw any concrit at me that you'd like.

Part One

Jason has tried running.

From the streets of Rio de Janeiro, sweat-slicked and rendered surreal by the constant flash of neon lights, to the gritty dust and unique orange glow of Nairobi, to Goa, where modern and ancient twirl around each other in a schizophrenic dance. He has played the CIA's game, and its wages have been a handful of new scars to add to the ones whose origin he cannot remember, one snapshot, and the taste of death rising from warmed lips; Jason is tired. If the ends of the earth are not enough distance between himself and his handlers grasping fingers, then he will set up shop in a place so close that they cannot possibly ignore him. Mexico, snug against the US of A's back door, where the saintly and the sinful jostle against one another and extend beseeching hands to any and all who walk down her streets. The sun is warm and golden (Marie had loved the tropics, but Jason does not allow himself to think about that when he is sober), the music is loud, and the colors are bright enough to sear him. It is not a place for a lone gringo who moves like a cat rather than a tourist to stay anonymous for long, and that's all right. Whomever Jason was before, the man that he is now keeps his promises. Now all that remains is to find out if Landy keeps hers. If not…well, Jason has a whole new name to place to this killer's persona that shifts and stretches inside of him. If his latest warning is not heeded-if he is attacked again-then he and David Webb will close that last bit of distance between them. See if what Jason fears is true, if he is going to look at them side by side and discover that there's no difference at all.

---

The café is bustling at just past noon, nearly every table taken and being tended to by two harried waitresses. Anita likes the gringo who sits alone at the corner table, the one with the looks of an aging choirboy, in spite of herself. He's more polite than the usual fat, arrogant Americanos who throng this place during the tourist season, or the local businessmen who talk on cellular phones but hold medieval attitudes towards the opposite sex. The choirboy barely lets her get three words out in her faltering English before he interrupts her in formal but correct Spanish, saying that whichever language she is most comfortable in will be fine. Anita flashes him a smile as she sets down his coffee and takes his order. The gringo begins to smile back, the slow, sweet kind of smile that built on its own momentum, the kind of smile that her mother has warned her to watch out for, before his eyes fix onto her chin. The smile slides off his face like a dropped stitch, leaving behind a different man altogether. This man puts a lead ball into Anita's stomach to match the ones given to her by the businessmen who think that the price of their meal includes a good swat at her behind, and she takes a fast step back from the table.

"Is everything all right, senor?" For a second or so, even Spanish is beyond her, and she is glad that English is not required, or else she would be rendered mute. Anita touches at her chin, but feels nothing more peculiar than the cleft that she was born with. An unusual feature to be found on a Mexican girl, but not worthy of the stare that she is being given now.

"Yes." The gringo shivers for a moment, as if his is shaking off one of the ghosts that her abuela was always rattling on about, and tries to smile again. After the glimpse of the man beneath the smile that Anita has been given it looks cheap, pasted on. "It's fine. Sorry if I frightened you."

"N-no." Anita clears her throat, touches at her neck in embarrassment. "I'll just get your order in." The gringo's eyes are apologetic as she gathers up his menu, striking at a point between her shoulder blades even when she has turned away, but the spell is broken. Anita thinks that she might call her mother on the phone tonight and see if she has any other advice to share.

There are already rivulets of sweat running down the curve of the cook's spine and spreading damp patches across the back of his shirt when Anita takes the gringo's order back; the kitchen is redolent with the smells of frying onions and roasting pork. The cook glances at the sheet of paper that Anita hands over, grunts acknowledgement, and turns his head to yell a stream of foul-mouthed Spanish to his assistants. The words bear little resemblance to the crisp, academic Spanish preferred by the choirboy, and his assistants double their speed. The cook grunts again, shakes his head, and disappears only to reappear later with the flautas for table three, where a trio of businessmen wait with gleaming eyes and fast hands. Anita glances their way and mutters an oath under her breath, flicking a grateful look the cook's way as he pats her arm in sympathy. Anita takes a moment to steal herself before she runs the gauntlet and happens to glance out over the patio, gaining herself a clear view of the bar across the street. A long black car in pulling to a halt in front of it, and a frisson of fear runs up Anita's spine even as she turns away to claim the flautas before they grow cold. There are many kinds of men and women alike who would drive a car such as that and have business in a bar in the middle of the day, and it is none of Anita's concern what they do. Less trouble for her either way.

A hand creeps up her thigh at table three, light and gentle rather than cruel. Somehow this is worse, and Anita bites her lip until a bead of blood blends into her lipstick to avoid looking at the hand's owner. She feels the choirboy's eyes resting hot and heavy against the side of her neck, but he does not rise to come to her rescue.

With her back turned towards the patio, Anita does not see the two men who enter the bar as soon as the door swings shut.

---

Sands has decided that there's a lot to be learned about a culture from the way that it treats its cripples. The poor families, familiar with eating dust and neglect, pass by quickly with a muttered "Pobrecito" and the whisper-quick sound of fingers moving over fabric as they cross themselves, pity filling the air so thick and heavy that Sands thinks it lick it from the breeze. The wealthier ones, though, that's where it gets interesting. These are the ones who have climbed to the top of the food chain by exploiting those insidious American tendrils which creep throughout their homeland, and every one of them still imagines that they can smell the stench of betrayal on themselves. These are the ones that utter oaths and snicker beneath their breaths, content in the knowledge that the universe at large is bringing down justice onto the heads of the gringos where they themselves don't dare.

Oddly enough, it is usually the poor families that El has to grab his elbow to stop him from shooting.

Whether it is pity or contempt that they flick his way, however, one thing remains the same across the board: the first glance that they give him is also the last. Mexico is full of broken dolls, shattered toys. People like Sands are a peso a dozen. Hard lesson to learn for a person used to standing over the chessboard as its lord and master, but Sands is learning.

The car idles to a stop in front of the bar. Sands holds his breath, focusing hard to pick the sound of one engine out of the chaos of cars, trucks, and human voices that clog the street beyond it. The biggest Mexican that Sands had ever seen is silent beside him, not even sending out a clink of chains from his pants as he shifts his weight. Staying silent so that Sands can listen and therefore navigate better, he realizes, and is a little alarmed by how natural that feels.

The car's engine cuts off, leaving a little hole in the tapestry of sound that Sands weaves around himself in place of his eyes, and is replaced by the sound of the door squeaking open. They really should oil that. It tells Sands exactly where Ramon Alvarez, one of a rapidly shrinking pool of cartel kingpins, is located as he steps out onto the curb. Sands' hand moves towards the guns tucked away in shoulder holsters beneath his sports coat, and it is only El's fingers touching his inner arm that prevents him from firing then and there. Pedestrians. Right. Leave old Jingle Bells to give a shit about something like that.

"He's going inside," El murmurs, his hand leaving Sands' arms to grasp briefly at the back of his neck, fingers leaving a trail of fire even as his touch is light.

"Righty-o." Sands drops his hand away from the gun and lets the sound of El's jangling footfalls lead him to the door of the bar. It is the lunch hour; the street is crowded with footsteps and the mingled chimes of English and liquid-fast Spanish. The jangle of El's chains is swallowed for a moment by the crowd noise, and a furrow appears between Sands' eyes, the only outward sign he gives of the unease that is uncoiling through his spine. The moment of gratitude that he feels when El's fingers touch his arm gain is overshadowed by irritation before it is identified by irritation before it is identified and allowed to undo him. Sands shakes off the touch, snapping, "I'm fine." He doesn't need his eyes to feel the other man's glower. Boy, howdy, but there isn't enough time to catalogue all the ways in which he does not care. "Let's just do this."

"As you wish." The glower is replaced by the faintest suggestions of a smile. Sands supposes that it's what he gets for picking a hotel with cable. He flicks the white cane hanging from a cord about his wrist into his palm-goddamned pig fucking thing, and every time Sands has to use it he is reminded anew of why he does this-hearing the murmurs start up all around him right on cue. It's as if the entire world reads from a script and Sands is the only one not in on it.

El stays close enough so that Sands does not lose the sound of his pants again but steps to the side when they reach the door of the bar, allowing the other man to enter ahead of him. Blind men, after all, couldn't possibly pose any threat to one such as Alvarez.

There are times when the irony gods let people fuck them back every bit as hard as they have been fucked over in return. This happens to be one of those times, is all.

"Sorry, but we're clo-" the doorman begins, sounding bored, arrogant, and above all young. For the first two alone Sands really has no problem with killing him; it is for the third that he thinks El saves him. Jingle Bells steps up fast, faster even than Sands can pull his guns from their holsters, and there is a meaty smack of some kind of hard object meeting flesh. The kid's words are drowned in a liquid garble, a thud as he collapses to the floor. Sands is willing to bet anything that when the kid wakes up, it will to the imprint of a gun butt across his lips and some broken teeth. It's still better than what Sands had planned.

Saves the kid's life, maybe, but throws one hell of a monkey wrench into what had been their plan of attack. Well, El had called it a plan. Sands had called it a clusterfuck waiting to happen. There's was a relationship that believed in open communication. It's hard to draw an advantage from the cartels underestimating a blind man when the blind man's buddy knocks one of the guard's unconscious with a single move. Chairs shriek back as bodies push them away from a table, garbled Spanish is shouted out. Sands is already constructing a mental map of the place by orienting himself to these sounds. He pivots quickly to the left, crossing his arms over themselves to draw both guns at once, and so misses the first rain of bullets by a margin so slim that it would have widened his eyes, had he still been in possession of them. They punch into the wall behind him, whomp-whomp-whomp, and Sands feels a hail of wood splinters entering his cheek a bare second later. The unique sensation created by flood fresh from the fount running down his face brings déjà vu to a brand new level. Sands is sure that the grin which cracks his face into two halves is miles away from anything that could be called sane. Ah, memories.

The second guard adds his voice to the cacophony-older, deeper, roughened with years of cigarettes, cheap liquor, and various other sins a-go-go. The click of his hammer being drawn back is very loud in the ear-ringing lull that follows on the heels of the first flurry. The sound of El's sawed-off shotgun being fired is much louder, and the second guard makes a wet noise as he strikes the cement. Guess he didn't pass the mariachi test of approval, then.

A bullet pings off the cement in front of Sands, and El snarls a mixture of English and Spanish in his direction. His own job. Might be helpful if he did it. Sands drops to one knee with a grace that the cartel members are likely telling themselves is impossible for blind men outside of fairytales. Sands feels a laugh, the full-throated, only marginally sane kind that seems to be his specialty, rising in his throat. As far as he's concerned, reality has been kicking fantasy's ass where the surreal is concerned for nearly a year now. It's becoming hard to remember a period when his day to day life didn't resemble a Dali painting.

Three bullets fired back in quick succession, followed closely by two of the wet thumps that Sands loves to hear and a tinkling of broken glass. Sands' mental landscape shifts itself to accommodate the bar itself. He feels like a kind of cracked artist in moments such as these, painting portraits that make sense only to himself, and possibly El when he's drunk enough. Speaking of which…

The heavy, masculine boom of the shotgun sounds again, so close that it makes Sands' head pound as if someone has set up a large gong inside his temporal lobe, followed by the empty shells falling to the ground. This would be so much easier if he could convince El to update his weaponry; Sands has known people who were attached to their kids less than El is to that damned gun.

"Here!" Sands yells, feeling forward until his fingers find the edge of a table and flipping it over. He fires several more shots over the top of their makeshift cover and hears the satisfying thumps of falling bodies. Ten bullets per clip, thank you very much, and he'll be dead before you catch him carrying a clumsy phallic symbol like the one El carts with him from place to place, pun very much intended.

"Is the fucker dead yet?" Sands asks as El's bulk drops down beside him. "One's the same as all the others to me."

El reloads the gun in three quick movements, so fast that it would make Sands' vision blur to watch him if that were still possible. Testament to why the man still lived and breathed when a vast portion of Mexico would love to have his head hanging on their walls. El pauses long enough to tilt his head over the top of the table. A bullet whines over his head and several more slam into the wood. El's tone does not change as he ducks back down. "No. Behind the bar."

Joy. Sands takes a deep breath and a second to enjoy the pulse-jerking rush of it, giddy and reckless. Just for a moment, the colors blossoming in his mind are enough to make him think that the blind can once again see. When they fade, the urge to keep the balance by shoving the Glock up Alvarez's ass sideways and pulling the trigger is stronger than ever.

Behind the bar, behind the bar. The space between the overturned table and the bar is a gaping maw as far as Sands is concerned, riddled with all manner of nameless monsters. He grits his teeth until he tastes flakes of bone on his tongue, wishing that he had let Ajedrez live long enough for him to visit a little more of his own hospitality right back at her. "I can't-" The words are bitter, choking, and he is forced to swallow them back down on a curse.

Jingle Bells doesn't seem to have such compunctions. He's over the edge of the table before Sands can call him back, tell him that he's being a moron, and the curse surges right back up Sands' throat to explode into the air. He tastes blood and cordite as he speaks, a tinge of fear that he won't even admit to himself, let alone El. The bullets ringing through the air suddenly double, and Sands' second string of obscenities lasts much longer than the first. The whine of bullets makes it difficult to impossible to completely orient himself, turns the bar into a spider-web laced with razor wire. Sands grits his teeth, darts his upper body over the cover of the table, and begins returning cover fire, only hoping that he isn't blowing away his only ally in the process.

Sands has become well-attuned to the symphony that bullets create as they move through the air, much like a maestro conductor can pull a single flawed note out of an otherwise perfect concert. When a bullet strikes plastic the sound is fragile, cheap somehow. Wood is better, a good solid thunk that reverberates through the skull like the sound of the gunshot itself.

One an ordinary day, the damp, lethal splat of lead entering into flesh and bone would have made Sands' heart skip a beat.

When it's followed on close heels by El's snarled curse, it stops it entirely.

'Not fucking happening,' Sands snarls to himself as he executes a move worthy of any macho hero in any of the macho action movies that made up his teenaged years, the ones that he had always wanted to die for their very macho stupidity.

Sands has always been the type to root for the bad guy. Go figure.

One hand braced against the edge of the table, the other wrapped firmly around the handle of his gun (dangerous enough to be going about with only one, oh, he and El are going to be having a chat about this is the damned idiot hasn't gotten himself killed), and he springs from the safety of the cover in a move that a sighted man would have been pleased to execute. A fallen chair tangles around Sands' legs, and for one dangerous moment he thinks he's going to eat concrete. The laughter of Alvarez's hired men rings out even as Sands is kicking the chair away and finding his balance again. The arm holding the gun whips out, bang, bang, bang, and that's the end of the laughter. The end of the gunshots, too. Sands' lips turn up in spite of the meth-fed tango that his heart is doing in his chest, even as he ears his own voice call out, "El?" Way too much worry there, goddamnit, one more patch stripped away from his mask. El has been one of a short list of people to realize that it's a mask to begin with, so Sands supposes that this makes him worth the sacrifice. Maybe.

"Flesh wound," El says, his voice threaded tight with pain and anger. Sands doesn't need eyes to know that El's expression is black and heavy, that he is using the avenging angel glower that puts most people in the mind to find religion fast. The fact that he counterbalances it by keeping a devil at his side doesn't seem to serve as much reassurance.

Sands' heart slows by half and decides that it's all right to stay in his ribcage for now, rather than trying its luck at climbing up into his throat or down into his lower intestine. He takes it out on the chair instead of allowing it to grow traitorous voice, kicking it away from him and listening to it skitter across the floor. The only sounds that remain in the room are three ragged sets of breathing.

Oh, no, boys and girls, we're not ready for the grand finale just yet. Sands ejects the spent cartridge from his gun, pulls a spare from the pocket of his sports coat, and slams it back home. El shifts his weight, grunting a little in exertion or pain before the sound of his chains says he headed for the bar. Sands doesn't know which one it is, and he tells himself that he doesn't care. If the only one that's left for Sands to lie to is himself, then he'll be damned if he does it in anything less than high style.

El told him what Roman Alvarez looked like the night before pressing his lips close to Sands' ear and speaking in such a low tone that Sands was forced to translate in vibration rather than sound. A short man, once strong but now running to far, so that his width was rapidly approaching his height. Thick black hair that was only now beginning to go silver at the temples in spite of the fact that Alvarez had bid fifty good-bye some years before. A vanity point, El said, pausing in his description long enough to bite at the side of Sands' neck, leaving indents and claiming bruises in the flesh. One of few. He was one of three remaining drug kingpins in Mexico, each more paranoid than the last.

Oh, yeah. And he was directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of thousands.

Join the club, Sands had wanted to say, until El had murmured into his ear that Alvarez also had a certain fascination with investing. Since he found himself on a rather sticky side of the law to begin pouring dough into Wall Street, he instead invested in people. Thirty years before, one of his projects had been the education of a hungry young man named Sergio Guevara.

Well, now. When El put it that way, the whole picture gained, if Sands was going to allow himself this one small liberty, a whole new clarity.

Sands follows El's footsteps around the side of the bar and swears when he encounters debris, kicks the worst of it out of this way. Glass crunches beneath the soles of his boots; the smell of liquor floods the room, strong enough to make his ruined tear ducts burn. Sands coughs and briefly covers his mouth with his hand. The sharp, cutting smell of alcohol isn't one that sends too many good images flooding down the ol' memory circuits.

Ramon Alvarez is huddled beneath the bar, murmuring in a low, rapid voice. Sands cannot pick out what the man is saying, nor does he particularly care to. Alvarez's tone is angry and fearful, arrogance and the sudden incoming rush of his own mortality twining together like snakes. It's almost as good as being able to see his expression.

Only 'almost', though, and when the boom of El's shotgun makes the very walls shudder, Sands feels his lips quirk. Revenge, he has discovered, doesn't have to be served cold, so long as the portions are large enough.

El is breathing hard, and there is a hitch in his breath when he speaks. Flesh wound, Sands' ass. 'La policia will be on their way," El says. "We should not be here when they arrive."

Sands nods and takes a step forward, towards El and towards the corpse. His foot strikes something small and metallic, something that makes a skittering noise as it slides across the floor. The tinny noise of voices being broadcast across a distance is suddenly one of the loudest sounds that Sands has ever heard. Cellphone. Alvarez was talking into a cellphone. The word, 'Oh, fuck' take on a whole new dimension. "Uh, El?"

Part Two

Gunfire makes the hair along the back of Jason's neck stand up in a ridge, causes his pulse to double in a span of seconds. His elbow jogs the coffee cup that the pretty, unfortunately familiar waitress had set before him bare moments before and sends it crashing to the floor. Shards of crockery fly and coffee splashes against the leg of his jeans. Jason's lips pull back from his teeth, but that is all.

Few people glance over at the mess or noise that the clumsy Americano has made. The restaurant is crowded, and the chatter of conversation is replaced by the sounds of chairs scuffing back and bodies hurling themselves to the floor before the first shot has a chance to echo away.

The first. Not the last. Jason's hand dives beneath the table to the small duffel bag that travels with him everywhere he goes now-he won't be caught unawares again, even as he murmurs a request for pardon to Marie's spirit every time his fingers touch it-the one that contains money, passports, and the most important things of all: his weapons. The nine-millimeter feels heavy against the palm of his hand, metal slightly oily to the touch and warming immediately to his skin. Jason does not know if it is the man that he cannot remember or the one that he is now that makes the gun feel so welcome to his hands, and there is no time to ponder.

Jason is halfway across the restaurant's open-aired veranda, gun in one hand and bag of belongings in the other, before he realizes that the sounds are originating from the bar across the street, the one that by rights shouldn't even be open this early. Unlikely that's about him, then, or that it's CIA. They would use a few quick sniper shots, avoiding spectacle through the anonymity of one more tourist who wandered too far off the beaten path and paid for it.

This revelation does little to soothe Jason's nerves. He takes a step backwards, a return towards the relative gloom of the restaurant interior, and notices the number of eyes watching the only fool stupid enough to be standing up when a battle could spill into the street at any second. Sirens begin in the distance, several blocks away and drawing closer; someone has had the presence of mind to call La Policia. Jason is sure that everyone in the restaurant would love to tell the authorities about the lone gringo who pulled a gun from nowhere and moved like he knew what he was doing and hey, while you're at it, here's a detailed description. It's time to leave. Jason tells himself that whatever is happening in the bar is none of his business and tries hared to leave his conscience behind with the crumpled pesos that cover his check.

He is halfway across the street, breathing in dust worthy of a spaghetti western in spite of the fact that the road is paved, when two sleek black cars screech up to the curb fast enough to leave long curls of rubber behind them. Survival instincts never quite fade away. The duffel bag is one the ground, the safety is off the 9mm, and Jason is behind a parked car even as men are spilling from the cars, as two additional men are spilling from the bar.

They are of average height, Jason notes with the clinical detachment that still startles him on occasion, one of muscular build and the other of the kind of leanness made to be underestimated. The muscular man is Mexican, the leaner American, though his skin is slowly developing the beaten copper hue that Jason has seen in other ex-patriots, the one that says that Mexico is claiming herself either another victim or another favored son.

Neither man looks pleased to see the additional cars screeching to a halt at the curb, Jason notes, but neither do they look surprised. The American is wearing beetle-black glasses that obscure his eyes, catching the light and throwing it back in a white glare. His head tilts towards the cars' wheels as the brakes scream, and he scrambles with his free hand for a gun in the shoulder holster beneath his jacket. The first man to emerge gets a bullet in his kneecap and a second between his eyes when he screams.

The American's friend is, if anything, even faster. Two shots that find their mark in either chest or head and ensure that his victims won't be getting up to make trouble again, and then the ancient sawed-off shotgun is spent. The man is making a face of disgust even as he is pulling another gun out of seemingly thin air, a far more practical Glock to match the ones that his friend and even Jason himself carry.

One quick glance at the people spilling from the cars-most of them learning from their partners' mistakes and emerging with guns drawn and safeties off-and the phalanx of sleek black metal coming up the street from the other direction, and Jason can tell that the pair is going to need the extra ammunition. Whomever they killed or maimed within the bar, it looks like the person came equipped with a well-oiled set of connections. Add to that the approaching wail of police sirens, and it's a fight that Jason doesn't need to be a part of. He reclaims his duffel bag and is ready to slink off, leaving the pair in front of the bar to any and all chaos that they have made for themselves, when a burst of pure panic in human form whirls across the veranda and towards the street.

His waitress. Jason recognizes her as a flash of black and white, fear devoid of logic and doing its damnedest to sprint away from the scene on unsteady legs, before the rest of his brain can catch up to her identity. He lunges from behind the safety of his cover without having the time to think about it, grabbing the waitress about her waist and slinging them both to the ground. The air expels from her lungs in a startled whoosh as her back strikes the pavement, and her eyes are as wide and gleaming as those of a wounded rabbit. There will be bright green clusters of bruises blossoming over her back that evening, but Jason has taken her chance at inadvertent suicide away from her.

Though not, as it turns out, removed either of them from danger's greedy grasp. The sight of a man with a gun lunging from nowhere is more than enough to spur already antsy trigger fingers into action, and in the next second the air is singing with bullets. Jason swears and draws his legs closer to himself as sparks ping off the cement around him, throwing out his arm to return the favor with a few shots of his own. Though Jason does not spare the time to look around to see who, if anybody, that he has hit and his ears are ringing too badly to listen for the sounds of falling human forms, there is a lull in the gunfire. Jason uses it to roll back to his feet in one quick movement, tugging the waitress up with him and shoving her back towards the comparative safety of the restaurant. "Stay in there," he growls into her ear before he releases her. Strain is deepening the southern twang in his voice, turning it into something silky and dangerous enough to send a dead man's fingers trailing up his spine. The waitress's nod is shaky, her eyes still glassy and dazed, but she obeys him as well as she is able. Jason watches her from the corner up his eye until he is sure that she is among the company of people that will not allow her to do something so foolish again. It's the only way that he can keep track of her without losing sight of his own precarious position.

There is no use in pretending that he isn't going to be a part of this, whatever 'this' is. Jason has a strong suspicion that he already knows, and he takes a step further into the street. The muscular man, the true Mexican, gives him a sharp-eyed glower that is full of cinder and brimstone, other firey things that Jason is sure would have far more of an impact on him if his adrenal glands weren't already working overtime from being shot at more than once in the past ten minutes. The irony of the fact that for once it's not actually about him would have cracked Jason's lips if it weren't for the fact of, well, gunfire.

The American jerks his head a like a bird towards the sound of Jason's footfalls, though Jason himself can barely hear the sounds of traffic over the gunfire that has picked up again, and he has no idea how this is possible. The American is putting a bullet into a well-dressed man's brainpan even as Jason is realizing that he is blind, and the insight comes with its own brief thunderclaps of shock. Brief because la policia are finally arriving on the scene, wail of sirens making the very air quiver like grieving widows. Thinking about anything other than shooting and not getting shot in return is rendered into an ill-affordable luxury. Jason's gun clicks on empty far too quickly, and he swears as he realizes that the spare clips are lying in the duffel bag several useless feet away. There is a strange feeling of rightness to the fact that he chooses a country of blood, dust, and edges sharp enough to cut upon the barest contact in which to finally go soft.

Jason spins and dives, feeling bullets cut the air around him like knives. His hand is barely brushing against the nylon before he realizes that there is no time, that he's been damned lucky to avoid being shot this far. The idea of dying curls along Jason's brain in the strange, abstract way that it always has over the past two years, simultaneously as real as the earth and as diaphanous as fantasy. His shoulder, only half healed, aches as though it has received a blow.

The pain becomes much sharper, jerked out of memory and into the glorious Technicolor of reality, as fingers close over the wound. Jason scarcely glances down to register the kissed bronze color of the knuckles before he is moving, throwing he hand away from himself and coming within nerve distance of shattering the arm that it is attached to before he remembers the presence of a person who might be an ally and, for a bright change of pace, just might not be his enemy.

The Mexican stares at him, coal-black eyes that belong on a demon as surely as they do a man revealing no shock or anger, and the barest suggestion of a shiver coils along Jason's skin. The clamps down on it before it can become fully recognized and demand his attention, watching as the Mexican hurls his arm back and fires at the men in well-pressed black suits who drive gleaming black cars. He does not, Jason notes, come close to hitting any of the police officers. The Mexican glances back towards Jason, tips his head down towards the duffel bag in a gesture that may even be respect, and says only, "Gringos attract attention." One of the man's calves is gleaming with fresh blood.

Yes. Yes, they do. Jason imagines whispers growing and swelling in the air around him, making it pulse, and he sets his teeth together hard enough to make neon flash in his head. A blazing trail for even the most inept organization to follow, in other words. Jason forgets for a moment that this is what he wanted a bare half-hour before. That situation would have been under his control, and this one has been spiraling away from him since it began.

"Yes," Jason agrees, his hand diving into the duffel bag and coming up with a spare clip even as his expression remains as taut and intent as it was moments before. Click-snap, and he's back to full lethalness faster than most people would have been able to turn on a light switch. The Mexican watches Jason reload with an approving expression, misses the calculating look that Jason tilts his way in return. The Mexican is keeping an eye on his blind friend, dividing his attention three different ways and suffering a loss for it. There is an intensity to his stare that makes something in Jason's gut flex in remembrance. He thinks that it might be affection.

"Sands!" the Mexican barks, his tone softened a notch by that fleeting look. How that is going to matter to a blind man, Jason does not know, and considers this to be at the very bottom of his list of priorities.

The blind man-Sands-twitches and whirls a bare second before he would have shot a woman barely shoving at her mid-twenties in the head. One of the police officers, as it turns out. Jason wonders if Sands knew. A hail of bullets whistles after him. Sands' mouth shapes the obscenities that both Jason and the Mexican are too far away to hear, as his body twists to the side with the grace and fate-defying luck of a cat. The man miraculously manages to remain unscathed and orients himself to the sound of the Mexican's voice with the abrupt tenacity of a predator discovering prey. The glittering smile that parts his lips does little to cast away the image. "El," Sands drawls, "can't you see that I'm in the middle of a tango here?"

'El?' Jason's lips form the word, sure that he misheard the name even as he cannot imagine what the correct form would be. The Mexican, who wears an outfit of such deep black and glittering silver so flamboyant that it must be some kind of obscure joke, can call himself whatever he likes, though. The well-dressed men that remain on their feet-Jason supposes that he should stop deluding himself and just admit that he's stumbled into the middle of a cartel bloodbath already-are find the police to be greater threats than the three men who appeared from out of nowhere and seem eager to return there. The police will not be nearly so forgiving. If Jason wanted to show the CIA that he was tired of hiding, at any rate, then he was succeeded brilliantly without even trying.

El, or whatever the gunned-up lunatic who holds a weapon the way that most men would a beautiful woman is named, steps forwards and takes his companion's arm in a grasp that is possession, threat, and concern dumped into one swirling cocktail. He flicks those dark, dark eyes over Jason as he does so, and Jason again feels that flicker of unease in spite of the fact that this guy seems to be on his side as much as he can be said to be on anyone's. "We have attracted enough attention for today."

Sands' grin is brilliant, manic. Jason understands why El maintains such a tight grip on his arm. "No such animal."

El does not loosen his fingers, however, even as his eyes flick over Jason again. There is respect there, Jason thinks, buried beneath the layers of ash and cinder. "The police have it in hand. We did what we came to do." The presence of the authorities is pulling people from their holes; idiots will never be in any shortage. Their growing numbers roil and swell.

El inclines his chin towards Jason. There is an invitation written into the gesture.

Jason tells himself that it is because he wants to know what he has thrown himself into that he accepts.

They are scarcely three blocks away, and gunfire still rings through the air like a child's firecrackers, when Jason seizes El by the shoulder, spins him around, and hurls him back against a wall before the other man can hope to react. There is a bare widening of the eyes-American tourists aren't supposed to move this quickly, no matter how good they are with a gun-but that is the only hint of surprise that he gives. El's knee comes up, aiming for the meaty part of Jason's thigh even as his fist hurtles towards Jason's face. Jason dodges the first but must sacrifice himself to the second, a thunderclap blow to the jaw that spins his head around and makes discordant symphonies ring through his head. That's all right, that's just fine; Jason has taken worse blows than this that he can remember and has the feeling that there are many more that he cannot. More important is figuring out which side of the war he just threw himself on. "What is this?" Jason grinds out around his throbbing jaw, each word sending spikes shooting through his head. "Who are you?" Another punch is thrown, and this one Jason manages to spot and duck in time, hurling back one of his own before the motion has been completed. There is a satisfying thunk as his knuckles rebound against bound and the yielding fragility of flesh, a vibration that he feels from his wrist up into his shoulder. This El, whatever, is strong and can take a strike as well as deliver one, but his skill is broad, unwieldy without the gun. Jason realizes that he could break the other man's arm in three places with two moves, and further realizes that a part of him wants to.

Marie had worn the dragon, she said, so that Jason didn't have to. He had never found the heart to tell her that, so far as he was concerned, the dragon was innate.

The answer to Jason's question comes in the form of a quiet clicking, heard once and then forever imprinted into the memory: the sound of a hammer being drawn back. Jason freezes while staring into eyes darker and hotter than the coffee he had been drinking minutes before, noting the pitch of the sound and figuring its likely distance from him. Even his mostly wildly optimistic guesses amount to 'too damned far.' There is a grim sort of irony to being outmaneuvered by a pair of men who aren't even CIA, and by so simple a maneuver as that.

"Think we could be asking you the same question," the man behind Jason says, further orienting his position. Blind or not, that's not a distance that Jason wants to risk. Not with the way that he has seen Sands shoot moments before. "In fact, seeing," A smirk enters Sands' voice, there and gone again before Jason can capture it and assure himself of its reality, "as we're the ones with the guns, I'd say that it's a given."

Jason's hands still rest on El's arm, but he does not make the decisive move. Not even when El produces a gun from the folds of nowhere and nudges it into the skin beneath Jason's jaw. The waitress is still reflected in El's eyes. Jason has a feeling that it is the main motivator keeping El's finger loose and relaxed on the trigger, and he knows that it's what prevents him from snapping El's arm like a matchstick and taking his chances.

"Jason," he says, offering no more. His hands fall away from El's arm.

"Such a nice, clean-cut name," Sands says from behind him. His amusement is familiar and dangerous, though Jason cannot say how. "El?"

"American," El says. His eyes never leave Jason's face.

Sands snorts. "I gathered that, Jingle Bells. What else?"

"Tall. Rubio," El continues. "A good fighter." Almost as an afterthought: "He saved a girl." El lowers the gun from Jason's jaw by a margin, allowing him to take a step back if he wishes. Jason very much wishes, though probably not for the same reasons that El is thinking. Two slow steps back from the Mexican, two closer to the American, whose chattering has now let Jason know exactly where he is without ever needing to turn his head. Both within reach now, and Jason thinks that he can move quickly enough to avoid getting killed if he decides to take them out. The question that remains is now one of whether or not he wants to.

"I'll be sure to pick him up a medal," Sands says, his tone dry. Jason doesn't hear him move, but the voice is a few paces further away when he adds, "Nice try, Sparky, but no dice."

Jason looks back at El and sees a smile curling against the edges of his mouth. "Jason," El says. The smoke and whiskey-rasp hidden in his accent turn the moniker into something exotic and nearly dangerous. "The cartels will be looking for you now, as well. It was foolish of you to jump in." Cartels. His hypothesis was correct, then.

Another soft snort from Sands, further away than ever. Jason wonders if the gun is still pointed at his back, decides that under no circumstances is he going to turn his head to look. 'Never betray uncertainty.' The face of the mentor who spoke those words remains cloaked in shadow. "He's right up your alley, then, isn't he?" To Jason: "You'll have to forgive El. He has a tendency to collect the walking dead. That, or they collect him. Never really figured out which way that works."

Jason starts very slightly at the word 'dead', a momentary spasm that he halts almost before it has a chance to get started. El's eyes document every move. "And that makes you two what?" Jason asks. "Robin Hood and his merry band?" He jerks his head back towards Sands as he speaks. El gives the phantom suggestion of a smile again as Sands makes a disgusted noise, and Jason wonders who close he's coming to being shot.

"Something like that." El speaks in a low voice, nearly a purr, that puts Jason of a mind to lean forward in order to hear him better. Only survival instinct keeps him rooted to his place. "And you?"

'Revenge.' It is on the tip of Jason's tongue to say it, which isn't precisely true any longer-at least, he doesn't think so. 'Nothing to lose,' follows closely on its heels, which is worse. "I like the sights," he says flatly. A silence long enough to be suspicious has already gone by.

El's eyes darken further, if such a thing is possible, rendering them fathomless. He inclines his head towards the mouth of the alley. The sounds of gunfire and, distantly, sirens can still be heard if one listens hard enough. His lips curve again, only for a moment, and in that second Jason realizes that he's looking into a mirror that is by far clearer than the one hanging above the dingy sink in his hotel room. El inclines his head towards the shadows at the end of the alley, where light gleams off of chrome for the briefest of seconds before being swallowed again by gloom. There is an invitation in the movement and, unbelievably, Jason feels as if he might smile. He extends his hand.

"I'll drive."

Part Three

Returning to Jason's hotel is out of the question. "Gringos attract attention." Truer words were never spoken, and Jason wonders how long it will be before the American who stepped into the middle of a drug-inspired gunfight is traced back to the uncommunicative tourist who has been staying there for the past two weeks. Days, if he is lucky. Hours, once he strips away the veneer of wishful thinking and allows himself to be perfectly, brutally honest. The thought that this kind of attention was once his goal is a sick spider hovering in the back of Jason's mind. Even if this were not the case, Jason is loathe to let the stranger and his talkative-and, Jason is beginning to realize with a wary sort of wonder, possibly not even entirely sane-companion know more about him than is strictly necessary.

He pulls El's car, a battered black Cadillac that somehow manages to convey the very essence of the man through its seats, to a halt in front of a cheap hotel that mirrors Jason's own in everything but location. The leather of the dashboard is cracked and peeled, letting Jason know more clearly than any words that this vehicle is merely a conveyance, a convenience rather than the child that so many men tended to view their cars as. Jason slots the tidbit into the mental dossier that he is building for his own use, along with the fact that the smell of smoke rises from the upholstery like a ghost every time one of the men shifts his weight. In the backseat, there is a cracking noise and a flare of sulfur as Sands lights a match.

"All right, sweetcheeks," Sands says around the fresh cigarillo that he has pushed between his teeth, "are we going to sit here all night and enjoy the view, or are we going to move our asses?"

Jason doesn't know-isn't sure that he wants to know-which one of them Sands is addressing. He flicks a cursory glance towards El, but the man is a statue as surely as the great Aztec ruins that Jason had viewed earlier than week while he was still playing the role of the dutiful tourist.

Jason shrugs and gets out of the car. His nerves are thrumming, his skin is tingling, and he feels as if he might explode into justifiable violence at any moment. It's a good feeling, an alive feeling, and Jason hopes that it lasts even as he worries about its consequences. He grabs his bag from the floorboard, flips it back over his shoulder, and tosses the keys across the roof of the car to El in one start-to-finish movement. His guns dangle out of sight less than three inches away from his hand, and this soothes Jason even though the days when he needed a gun in order to be dangerous man are long since descended into haze. El notes the movement, nods in something that may be approval, and returns to watching Sands exit the car. There is a moment when it looks as though Sands might catch his foot on the curb and send himself tumbling forward to share a passionate embrace with the sidewalk, and El's expression doesn't clear until Sands has lifted his foot over the obstacle with exaggerated care. It clears even further when Sands swivels his head towards El in an eerie parody of sight and slowly extends his middle finger. "I'm a bit past the phase where I need a wet nurse, dear."

"I know," El says calmly, but he does not halt his watching. The look of familiarity in the gesture makes Jason feels as if he's stepped into the middle of a dance that has only reluctantly halted to accommodate him. He wonders, only for a moment and not nearly so long as he should, why he doesn't walk back out again.

Sands rights himself by bracing his hand against the top of the car, pulling a face and yanking his hand away from the metal as soon as he can manage. Jason doesn't think that he does this because the hood of the car is hot. Sands stalks past them with a grace that is too perfect to be real, making his way towards the hotel entrance carefully. He lifts his feet a bit higher than he strictly has to with each step.

El watches Sands go with a picture of hunger and care painted onto his face that twists a hook deep inside Jason's gut. Jason leans back against the car, folding his arms over his chest. The car's door is warm to the point of blistering through the thin fabric of his shirt, but he will not betray his discomfort. Not with the way El's eyes move over him like they're looking for a flaw. The smell of cordite hangs in the golden air between them, and Jason cannot tell which man's skin it is rising from. He uncrosses his arms so that his fingers once again dangle inches away from the weapons. El notes the gesture without a change in expression.

"You are wondering which side you find yourself on now." Not a question. El doesn't give the impression that he even knows how to ask one.

Jason allows his lips to quirk for a second and sees something flash in El's eyes at the gleaming of teeth. "Something like that, yeah."

"An evil man was killed today," El says, pausing long enough to produce a cigarillo from nowhere. He lights it and pushes it between his lips before he continues. "A man who killed many and enslaved more to his poison. Do not worry that you've aided in the removal of a person worth knowing from the world."

Jason's smile is brighter, verging on the cruel. "Really. It occurs to me that you're not the first person who's said that in the defense of murder. And you won't be the last, either."

El blows twin columns of smoke from his nostrils, watching Jason carefully. "If Alvarez had gotten the chance, he would have killed that girl that you saved." Jason does not start or give any outward sign of distress-he understands now that he has been too well trained for that-but El's eyes narrow a tick all the same. "And there are more like him who would do the same." Jason sees himself reflected in El's eyes as the other man repeats, "You fight well."

"You've said that."

"Mexico has a way of giving people purpose where they before had none, so long as they are willing to reach for it." El takes another drag off the cigarillo. Tendrils of smoke coil between them. El dips his head towards Jason's duffel bag. "If you want to save more like her, we can always use a talented gun." El tosses the finished butt between his feet, grinds it out beneath the heel of his boot, and walks way. The ultimatum hangs unfinished in the air.

Jason stares after El with narrowed eyes and feels Marie curling tightly around his skin, being drawn down into his lungs with every breath that he takes. It is because of this pale of imitation of reality, and the desire to prevent more like it, that Jason pushes himself away from the car's heat and follows El into the cool gloom of the hotel.

End