Once Upon a Time in Mexico The Feed and Care of Madmen

TITLE: The Feed and Care of Madmen

AUTHOR: Mari

EMAIL:

RATING: R

DISCLAIMER: All the characters within belong to RobRod and various other people at Troublemakers Studios who are most emphatically not myself. No profit is being made.

FEEDBACK: I'm an attention whore and possible monkey-crack fiend. Send me the good, send me the bad, send me the barely legible.

SUMMARY: Sands is not the only one experiencing a rebirth. Sequel to 'Three Days'.

PAIRING: Well, it's slashier than 'Three Days', but there's still nothing truly definitive. Can we say 'slashier preslash'?

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This was written some months ago, but various RL and online issues have prevented me from doing the rewrites until just this week. I dunno why I mentioned that, other than the discourage the appearance that I am a lazy, lazy wench.

The Feed and Care of Madmen

It is impossible to take the measure of any man, be he the most ecstatic saint or the blackest devil, in the span of two weeks. When the man in question is one who has built a business for himself of suspending somewhere in the vast between, El suspects that it may never be fully possible. In the moments when he pauses to think about it he wonders why he even cares, if that is what this stumbling, half alive curiosity is.

On even rarer occasions, he pauses to wonder when caring about something became such a novelty that he has to stop in order to identify it.

The village becomes visible in the golden afternoon light, shooting up from the horizon at a rate that defies physics, and El realizes with a jolt that he has been clutching at the steering wheel with his weaker hand long enough to send a streak of numbness running into his elbow. The tendons creak and throb as El opens his palm and flexes his fingers. No guitar tonight, and he feels a stab of loss at that prospect even now. It was the one constant that even the death of his family had been unable to strip away from him, though the colors of the music have become faded and the notes often ring false.

Whispering thoughts of Carolina invoke her ghost to rise up from the earth and hover in painful/comfortable proximity throughout the interior of the car. If El were to close his eyes he imagines that he would be able to see her in the passenger seat, taking the place of the seat's current occupant and giving him the smile of quicksilver mischief that undid him a little more each time. Though the windows are rolled down to drive the heat away on an artificial breeze, El swears that he can smell gardenia rising from the upholstery.

Reality is not nearly so kind as her gentle sister, Fantasy. The man in the passenger seat does not grow soft curves or delicate cheekbones, long dark hair and even darker eyes. Is not in possession of eyes at all, a fact which gives a flicker of satisfaction that El does not try to hide from himself. He is not so far gone that he does not appreciate those rare instances when justice strikes her intended target rather than a smattering of innocent passers-by.

The streets of the villages are empty when El pulls the car to a stop in front of the building and cuts the engine, listening to it tick as it cools. The death shroud that Sands wove at the start of the debacle is still hanging across the house, and El pauses a moment to worry at the wisdom of bringing Sands back here at all. When no answer is forthcoming within his own mind, he worries more.

The abrupt lack of sound, jarring against the wheezing roar that the ancient engine had been making a few seconds before, is what wakes Sands. He's still on painkillers, more than are needed and more than is healthy, and it shows in his reaction time. His hand dips towards the place where a gunbelt once sat and would sit again, if El ever goes stark raving mad. El darts his hand out, lightning-quick and snake-eager, and captures Sands's wrist a second before it can reach its destination. Sands's wrist is hot and too thin, verging on the skeletal. It is the will of the man beneath the skin that keeps it from crossing over the line into fragility. "Easy, my friend," El says, waiting to see that Sands is fully awake before he allows him to yank his arm away.

"Wish you would quit fucking calling me that." Sands raises his hand towards the dark glasses that make him look like an insect and hide horrors underneath, as if he would like to rub the sleep from his eyes. His mouth twists and his hand drops back into his lap when memory makes its glorious reentry. "Where are we?"

"Ciudad de Santa Teresa." El waits a moment to see if Sands is going to show any flicker of recognition at the name and allows a sigh to whistle through his nose when none is forthcoming. "My home. Cucuy killed a man here, in order to find me for you."

"Did he." The lazy drawl that El is already beginning to hate is creeping into Sands's voice like a virus. "I'll have to keep that in mind when I mail his Christmas bonus to his family."

El feels his lips thin into nothing; though there is no way that Sands can see the motion, the corners of his mouth turn up. Sands has run himself on determination and hatred alone since he lost his eyes, since the young Chicle peddler happened to stumble over El and had brought both him and a doctor to the martyr who didn't have the sense to lay down and die. He hugs the rage to himself the way that a miser hoards his wealth, generating more with every moment even at the exorbitant rate with which he is burning it away. In the moments that El's curiosity is piqued he wonders what Sands plans to do when his temple of rage finally burns to the ground, leaving him surrounded by the ash. For those brief few seconds, the need to know that answer is so strong as to be painful.

Sands has used up his commentary for the moment, thought, and El is forced to back away one more time with his query left unanswered. He pulls the key from the ignition. "This is where we stop."

Sands gets out of the car, stumbling and swearing in a mixture of English and Spanish as his toe catches on a rock. He rights himself with an expression of grim determination etched upon his face and rakes his fingers through his hair so violently that the resulting mess looks like crow's wings. Sands stands by the side of the car, motionless and with a forbidding expression, until El realizes that this is unfamiliar territory, and Sands might as well be standing in the middle of a minefield. A sickly bloom of pity, that rare flower that El has never been able to weed out of the occasional flowering, rises within his chest. El jerks his foot, sending the chains on his pants into jingling melody. Sands's head swivels towards the sound. He has spent the last two weeks pushing himself with a fervor normally reserved for scientists and saints, and El has come to realize that he is a very fast learner. It may be wise to keep a closer watch on his guns for a while longer yet.

"The apartment is this way," El says, and Sands's head turns further as he orients himself to the sound. He nods once, the movement shakier than he would likely appreciate if he were still able to see himself, as he starts around the car. El notices that Sands keeps his hand braced against the hood as an anchoring point but chooses not to comment. He lifts his guitar cases from the back seat instead, feeling the equal thrill that they give him as they meet his palms. Guns and guitars, both instruments of passion, and it occurs to El that it is a blasphemy of the deepest sort that they should still feel so natural in his hands.

El says nothing on the short walk across the courtyard, trusting in Sands to follow him by sound and knowing that by the soft pad of footfalls behind him that his trust has not been misplaced. Very soft. It will not be long before Sands is an exceedingly dangerous man again. For El's own sake he had better understand what his is doing by then.

He reaches the stairs and steps onto them without thinking, not realizing until some six paces later that his companion might not find it so easy. There is the sound of a stumble and mixture of curses in several different languages, all of them wound together too tightly to be distinguishable from one another. El pauses, but does not turn around. "Watch out," he calls over his shoulder.

"Fuck you," comes the growled response, and El feels the corners of his mouth lift up a shade. Pity can only go so far towards making him forget what he is dealing with, who he is dealing with. He does, however, slow his paces on the remaining stairs so that Sands can keep up, listening as the other man stumbles and swears with equal profiency. El halts and turns when he reaches the landing.

"Last one," he says.

The expression on Sands's face wars between gratitude that El would offer his help and fury that Sands should even need it. He lowers the foot that was poised to take another stair and offers a grudging, "Thanks," instead, shouldering past El onto safer ground. As he passes, El is startled to realize that he and Sands are nearly the same height. It had been easy to see Sands as smaller before, to view him as a sly, darting rodent that nipped and bit at others until he drew blood and forced them into doing his will because he had no real strength of his own. El realizes now that this was exactly how Sands wanted people to view him. He wonders, not for the first time or the last, at this new creature that has replaced the rodent and the ultimate wisdom of inviting him into his home. It doesn't stop him from directing Sands to the correct door with a word and a soft touch to the elbow, there and gone again before Sands can fully register its presence and take offense.

The apartment itself carries no traces that Carolina or his daughter ever lived there, save for a few carefully preserved items tucked away into a hidden drawer in the bedroom. El finds himself tensing as he enters, anyway, forever expecting a whiff of gardenia or a flash of color from the scarves that she had loved to wear. When one is forthcoming there arrives a wave of longing so exquisite that it feels like infant grief all over again. The undeniably Imale/I presence that he and Sands create in the stillness is an invasion.

"Love the décor," Sands says, offering a thin-lipped smile when he hears El turn. He is still limping, so slightly that anyone else would be unable to notice. El has seen a lot of wounds, inflicted a lot of wounds, and to him it stands out like a neon sign.

Sand's words are an invitation to fight, bitterness and rising desperation knocking each other back and forth and jostling for position in his voice, and in the end El decides to treat this one as he has all of the ones before it. "It serves its purpose," he grunts. El pauses a moment, considering, before he says, "The couch is about six steps to your left."

"Great." The fatigue shows in Sands's voice for the first time. For both of their sakes, El pretends not to notice. Sands makes his way over to the couch, barking his shin sharply on the coffee table in the process and shooting his middle finger over his shoulder at El. He slides onto the couch with the feline grace that El suspects will stay with him even unto death. "So," Sands says in a faux-plummy voice that signals at dangerous waters ahead. He gestures towards the guitar cases with the negligence of a king as El sets them down. "How much of my money is in those?"

El barks out a laugh that hurts his throat. "Your money?" he asks, allowing the incredulity to coat his voice, sour and thick. "Or have you forgotten the people that you stole it from?" Sands makes a flippant gesture. "Not here. I gave most of it to Lorenzo and Fideo."

Ah, now here is the reaction that has been boiling beneath Sands's skin for most of the time that they have been in each other's company. Sands sits up, and his boots thump to the floor loudly enough to make the baby in the apartment beneath them begin to wail. If Sands notices, he does not care. "You gave it away," Sands says in a low, flat voice as El folds his arms over his chest and waits for the snake to tire of proving that he still has fangs. "Twenty million pesos and you Ifucking gave it away/I?!" His voice rises towards a yell on the last half of the sentence; the baby downstairs screams louder. Her mother will be up the stairs to scold them within minutes. "And what the fuck might have possessed you to do that, hmm?" Sands runs his hand across the fabric of the sofa, which is lovely in its own way but hardly decadent. "Considering that you live in such a lap of luxury yourself. Or is this more of the tragic anti-hero shtick? Trying to pretend that your hands are still lily white?" Each word is measured and sharpened before Sands spits it out; for a blind man, he has very good aim. It is his choice in targets that is lacking.

El bends over the guitar cases, unlatching the clasps on first one, then the other. The guitar itself gets a caress before he sets it aside. The ache in his hand will not tolerate the notes today. It calls to him after it leaves his hands, though, an event that has not occurred for many months.

The guns are the instruments that need his attention the most at the moment. El finds a rag and some gun oil and settles down to the simple business of unloading and then cleaning the tools of his trade. Sands's head twitches towards the sound as El releases the clips and lays them to the side, one weapon seeking out another, but he says nothing. Rather than being the comfort that he has anticipated, the silence soon becomes oppressive. El finds himself in the rare position of searching for words to fill the void.

"It was not mine to keep," he says at last.

Sands twitches, coming back to the room from some place far, far away. "What?"

"The money." El rubs gun oil along the barrel of a revolver that drinks it up the way that a vampire does blood. "It was not mine. It belongs to the people of Mexico, the ones who bled for it for the right reasons."

Sands's lips turn up. El wonders if Sands has ever known how to properly smile, or if he was born delivering that sick madman's grin. "El, babe, Jingle Bells," he says, and for the first time since El found him on the street his voice has lost its razored hustler's edge. What replaces it is a faint sort of wonder. "Let me fill you in on one of the grand secrets of the world. Shh, now, you have to promise to keep it to yourself." Sands pauses with the air of a man about to impart some great revelation over a hushed and waiting audience. El continues to clean the guns. "There is no such thing as the right reason. Heroes fight, fuck, and kill for the same reasons that us Ordinary Joes do. Because it feels good." Sands levels his finger at El and El coils his hand around the gun that he holds out of reflex, even though it is not loaded and Sands is not armed. "Anything else is just societal window dressing to create freaks like you."

El's hand tightens further around the gun, this time not in reflex. Even unloaded, a gun still makes an excellent blunt weapon. The knowledge that this is perhaps what Sands is looking for restrains him, returns him to the passive act of cleaning the weapons. "And you?" El asks, thinking, 'Saved a child?' and wondering if he was mistaken. "How is this system working for you?" Sands's minefields are varied, dangerous, and nearly always unpredictable, but El is learning.

Sands stiffens right on cue, turning away and making a fist as though he wishes that he had a weapon. "Ah, I see," El says as he finishes with the final gun and settles it back into the case with its brethren. The weapons gleam and even seem to smile at him before he closes the lid on their smugness. "I know something of metamorphosis." Sands's lips quirk up. Perhaps he is surprised that El knows the word. "I know that it is always difficult, and what you find on the other end may surprise you."

The quirk turns into a full-fledged grin. If there is a gleam of nervousness in it, then it is gone too quickly for El to be sure. "Do you want us to hold hands and pray now?" Sands asks.

El snorts and picks up the case of guns to carry with him into the bedroom. The idea that a man, any man, might be able to change his destiny through force of will alone is hollow in the golden light of the afternoon. El swears to from then on reserve it for blood-soaked hotel rooms and the nights when the demons rise from the tequila. "I don't remember how," he says. "And you never knew."

---

The apartment feels dark and cramped to El, full of sick memories of the weeks he spent recovering from his gunshot wounds and worse, the brighter memories that came before. Within hours he is driven out as surely as a wolf running ahead of a forest fire, past a Sands who is either dozing away another one of his pills or doing a masterful job of pretending, and into open air that is beginning to shade into the deep plum color of twilight. A few of the town's inhabitants are still out, constructing the guitars that make up the village's feeble lifeblood, and they nod to their failed protector as he passes. El nods back, wondering if their eyes would hold the same awe if they knew of the identity of his visitor.

If the apartment is choked by Carolina's memories, then at her grave resides her soul. El feels her settling thick and close around his skin as he pushes open the ancient gate, enters the cemetery where the townspeople have come to bury their dead for longer back than any of the living can remember. Gardenia and the musty, earthy smell of books so old that they had accumulated stories far beyond their mere pages, a scent that had clung to Carolina everywhere she went and lingered long after she had gone. El feels it waft across his face as he kneels at the grave, a lover leaving the room moments before he is able to enter it. His grief is simultaneously as old as the earth and as new as yesterday, bittersweet, eternal.

Carolina's headstone is plain, consisting of only her name, her date of birth, and the date on which she died. Bland poetry about loving mothers and devoted wives would not have even hinted at the woman that she had been, and El had felt slightly sick when it was suggested to him. The smaller headstone nestled next to Carolina's, child bound to mother in death even as she had been in life, is equally plain.

"Mi corazon," El breathes, skimming his fingers across the inscriptions that bear their names. It seems the greatest crime of all that his heart should still beat while the maggots feast upon theirs, worse still that the mixture of revenge and infant patriotism upon which he feasts might even be healing him. Dead men should not come alive again. What does it say about him, then, hat even the deaths of the last things in the world that he cherished were not enough to destroy him?

"It is dark without you, Carolina." The wind sighs around him as his customary greeting tumbles past his lips. He can picture the deep furrow that appeared between Carolina's eyes whenever she was frustrated with him, her 'I-want' line. El's lips flirt with a smile and the breeze falls silent. How does he explain to her how tiring it is to burn on rage so long that there is nothing left but ash, only to have that final spark stolen from him? The words swirl around El's brain, too complex and difficult to voice, and in the end all he can manage is, "I need you." The wind has no answer. El bows his head, feeling the weight of the newly risen moon kissing the back of his neck. After several minutes he rises back to his feet and walks away.

---

The apartment is as dark as sin when El returns, even though he can hear someone moving about inside. El drops his hand to his waist, cursing himself for a fool for not taking a gun with him. His body grows tenser than one of his guitar strings.

Something that sounds delicate and expensive shatters from deeper into the gloom, and El tightens even further before he remembers. Blind men have no use for lights. El swats at the switch as he enters, his steps stealthy and light, his nerves still wound so tightly that they may order his body to kill someone before the rest of his mind can catch up with him. When he sees Sands kneeling over the pieces of ceramic that had once been an ashtray, he relaxes a notch. Not entirely. Around this man, never entirely.

El's footfalls are soft and the chains on his pants scarcely make a sound, but Sands still lifts his head before El manages to get within ten feet of him. Those sunglasses would obscure his expression even if he was still in possession of his eyes; their insectile gleam reveals nothing. El reads all that he needs to from the taut set of Sands's jaw and the muscle that ticks furiously in his cheek, the angry, wounded animal hunch of his shoulders. "Is everything all right?" Even to El's own ears, he cannot tell if the words are mocking or sincere. He does not suppose that it matters.

Sands exhales a laugh that sounds like the bastard child of a bark and a wheeze. "Oh, we're doing great, El," he snaps, turning the other man's name into a curse. To Sands's mind, El supposes that it might be. "We're doing fucking fantastic." He punctuates the words by hurling the largest piece of ceramic against the far wall, where it shatters into a thousand knives. Neither man throws up his arm to protect his face.

El spots a half-smoke cigarette lying a few feet away, burning a neat hole into carpet that from its days with an enthusiastic toddler crawling about the house has already seen much. El moves quickly and brings his foot down upon it, grinding it out before it can do any more damage. The unexpected movement causes Sands to flinch back, swearing when he catches himself. His hands trickle blood from all of the sharp edges that he cannot see to avoid. Roses blossom on the carpet where the drops fall.

"Why did you save me?" Sands asks, and his voice is soft, nearly afraid. It belongs to a much younger man than the jaded would-be chessmaster who kneels on the carpet now.

El crouches and begins to gather up the largest shards of the ashtray. "I have already told you."

Sands exhales through his nose. "Yeah, your precious curiosity. Spare me the bullshit, El. Why, really?" Sands throws out his arm to indicate the mess around himself. Blood spatters in a wide arc and feels hot enough to scald where it lands on skin. "So you can have the pleasure of watching me royally fuck up everything that I touch? I can't even smoke a cigarette on my own!"

"You will learn," El says, surprising himself when he realizes that he believes it. Men like Sands always seem to survive catastrophe; it is both their gift and, as El looks over the ravaged remains of the man that Sands used to be, their curse.

"I'll learn." Sands tilts his head towards his wounded hands, as if by the force of his will he can command himself into seeing the peach and crimson. He sighs after a long moment, dropping his hands onto his thighs. The rivulets of blood that run off his fingertips gleam faintly before the black denim drinks them up. El can see Sands ordering his mind onto less dangerous tracks, and there are many things that he could say in this moment. El knows much about picking up the shattered pieces of self from the ground, gluing them back together, and trying to call the cracked mess that remains whole. He has little enough compassion left in him to spare, though, especially for this man. El keeps his silence and watches Sands struggle.

Several moments pass in quiet before Sands exhales a sigh and uses the edge of the coffee table to pull himself back to his feet. He rakes his fingers through his hair, either not noticing or not caring that he is leaving tangles of blood in his wake, and ignores the mess on the floor entirely. El's eyebrows arch up.

"The extra bedroom," Sands says, seeming to notice for the first time that he is bleeding. He presses his fingers together, listening to the squelching sound and saying softly, "Fuck," before he continues. "That was your kid's room, wasn't it?"

El's heart leaps towards his breastbone and hangs there for several minutes, unbeating. His is too stunned to lie. "Yes." The room has been transformed since the last time his little girl was alive to see it. Gone is her bed, her dresser, the chest of toys that she had loved as fiercely as if they had been alive. All that remains is a cluster of crayon scribbles on one wall that El could not bear to paint over. Beyond that there is no sign left that a sweet baby girl had once slept there, and El wonders hwo Sands knew. It would seem that his eerie intuition has survived his blinding.

Sands considers this information with uncharacteristic care, nodding before he asks, "What was its name?"

El bristles and has to remind himself that, with no way to know his child's gender, Sands may not mean any disrespect. "Her name was Natalia." A blade creeps into his voice.

Sands either doesn't hear the warning or chooses not acknowledge it. El knows which option his money is resting on, and only the slimmest of chances that he may be wrong prevents him from striking the other man as he asks, "How old was she?"

"Three." Four in less than a month, as she would tell anyone who held still long enough to listen. Almost too old for dolls, El had told her, and then tossed her into the air until she squealed with delight. El realizes that he is breathing hard, that the sound is nearly deafening in the otherwise silent room. Sands has fallen quiet, whether out of respect or fear El cannot say. Both emotions seem equally alien to this man.

El feels like a man twice his age as he pushes himself to his feet. Sands's hands, he notices, are leaving vermilion roses across the carpet that are sure to stain. Somehow, blood always does. It has been years since the sight of blood aroused anything stronger than drowsy curiosity in El, but he hears himself say all the same, "Stay here. I'll get something for that."

Sands raises his hands before his face, holding them so close to his sunglasses that he is in danger of smearing blood across the lenses. It parodies sight closely enough to send an infant shiver cascading down El's spine. "Well, what do you know," Sands says in a dry tone that brings to mind microscopes and white coats. "Something that actually hurts."

El leaves the room quickly.

---

El sleeps deeply that night, more so than he would expect with a murderer who shows such obvious relish sleeping on the couch in the next room. He does not dream, and this is both a relief and a wound. Towards dawn El awakens, convinced that he feels eyes resting on him. His hand is underneath the mattress and the cool weight of the gun is in his hands before he realizes that the doorway is empty and, in any case, he is the only one in the apartment who has eyes. With his hand upon the gun he sleeps even more deeply than before.

Morning fills the apartment with a golden, buttery light that El cannot remember seeing before. He pauses and allows himself a moment to savor it before he gets out of the bed. Clattering noises are coming from the kitchen and, fearing damage to rival what was done to the living room the night before, El dresses quickly.

Sands is already learning control of the mannerisms that had marked him as a sighted man and does not lift his head at the sound of El's footfalls. Nonetheless, a line of tension coils along his shoulders like the snake that he still is and his hand drops down to the butt of the gun that he has tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Well. It took him took him longer than El had expected. The part of El that has been weaned to love a fight and always will, protests of religion and atonement be damned for the empty words and false promises that they are, awakens, stretches, and smiles.

The kitchen is small and El is across it in three paces, his hip striking the table and causing the clutters of dishes there to wobble ominously. El ignores it, but the sound of ceramic rebounding off itself distracts Sands for that crucial second. Sands's hand dives back towards the weapon, moving with a quicksilver speed that even a sighted man would be hard pressed to follow, and in his hands the gun becomes liquid.

A coffee cup explodes into shards of pottery, each one a knife in its own right, as Sands's bullet passes through it, right where El had been standing seconds before. It was always nice to know how others felt about him. El turns his head away to avoid being blinded, feeling tiny pricks of pain, like a group of particularly obnoxious mosquitoes, alight on his face and neck. The faint, sticky warmth of blood follows seconds afterwards. El is on Sands before he gets the chance to try his luck a second time.

Sands's wrist is warm and feels deceptively fragile beneath El's fingers. It is not until the gasp of pain, drawn from between clenched teeth, echoes against El's face that he realizes how hard he is squeezing. A faint grinding noise reverberates through the kitchen, and El cannot tell if it is Sands's teeth or the tendons in his arm grinding together. El loosens his grip enough to prevent permanent damage, reluctantly. Not enough for Sands to either pull free or pull the trigger, and the frustration is written across the other man's face for all to see.

El plucks the gun out of Sands's fingers, tosses it away from them both to land among the dishes that have managed to remain undamaged. A shattering noise tells El that the number has just become a few less, but he does not look around. A sick pounding is echoing through his head at the prospect of violence, an awakened addiction that even now he cannot bear to fully acknowledge, and for that alone El feels like striking Sands across the face and never stopping. The nausea that roils through El's stomach does not make the feeling go away.

"The fuck off me," Sands growls, shoving at El with his unimprisoned hand hard enough to push a little breathing room between them. As the haze recedes, El realizes that they are pressed thigh to thigh and he has Sands backed painfully against the sink. El allows himself to be moved back a few inches, no more.

"You don't need that here." El is unsure if he is referring to the gun itself or to the knife-edged menace that rolls off Sands nearly every minute that he is awake. He does not even know if he is telling the truth. El jerks his head in the direction of the coffee cup, forgetting for the moment that Sands cannot see the gesture. "Accidents could happen." The sarcasm tastes sweeter than he expected in his mouth.

Sands ceases struggling and look abashed for almost long enough to make El think that it is real. "You startled me," he says finally, sounding as if the words are being dragged from his throat with fishhooks. To Sands, used to controlling everything and everyone around him with a prince's boredom and sense of entitlement, El supposes that they might as well be. He releases Sands and takes a slow step back.

Sands does not attack. He rubs instead at the bruises that are already tattooing themselves against the skin of his wrist, paler than a true son of Mexico's would ever be regardless of how many years he spends under her nurturing/vengeful sun. A part of El wants to look away from the patterns of his fingers rising in Sands's flesh, while an equal part cannot bear to blink, and it is the warring of the two that makes El want to gnash his teeth and lash out. If he could only choose one, he thinks, he would finally be able to achieve a kind of peace. Carolina made it easy to pick a side, but her quieter, less assuming strength is no longer available to him. It occurs to El to ask Sands, but, if Dia de los Muertos was any indication, Sands's days of being of one mind and one impulse are long behind him.

"…son of a bitch," Sands says. El realizes that he has been drifting, a dangerous habit to nurture in his line of work.

"What?" he asks.

A line of irritation appears between Sands's eyebrows, but he repeats himself willingly enough. "I said, for someone who claims not to like violence, you are one violent son of a bitch."

"I never said I disliked it." El steps away further, allowing Sands to ease himself off of the sink. The other man winces as he moves, bringing one hand around to touch at the bruises that must be blooming and dropping it back to his side when he feels El's eyes upon him. Strip a man of everything else that he holds familiar or dear, and his pride will still find a way to raise its head. With this man, at least, it is something worth keeping in mind.

Sands's makes a whistling sound through his nose. "Of course not. You let the glower do your talking for you." He raises his hand as if to rub at his eyes, scowls and drops it back to his side. "Is there any coffee in this place?"

El surveys the mess that has been made of the countertops and feels his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth quirk simultaneously. The pounding in his head eases back to a manageable level. El wonders when it will be back again. "That is what you were looking for?"

"No, El, I was looking for my eyeballs. Want to help me find them?" Whether Sands intends it to be funny or not, he fails. The scowl deepens; El considers warning Sands that his face will freeze that way if he is not careful. His own mouth quirks further and he glances towards the gun before he scoops it up and shoves it into the waistband of his jeans, carefully engaging the safety first. Maybe later. El places the unharmed dishes back into the cabinets, leaves the destroyed ones to be dealt with later and, after a moment's thought (has it been this long since he lived, really lived, in this place? El does not like to think so, but he fears it may be true.), finds the coffee as well. The rich smell, civilization overtaking what had moments before been madness, begins to fill the apartment. The whip-like danger in Sands's spine eases a notch and he leans back against the sink, bracing himself with his hands.

El steps backwards until he is half-sitting upon the edge of the kitchen table. A few dishes make clinking noises as they are shifted out of his way and Sands's head twitches, but that is the only sign he gives of even knowing that El is still there. His chin is lowered, his arms are clasped across his chest. The expression on Sands's face is blank enough to make El wonder if has fallen asleep standing up, if not for the fact that he knows Sands better by now. Even so, El jerks when Sands finally speaks.

"How do you do it?" It is delivered in a voice so low that El has to strain to hear it, and he wonders what the words are costing their owner.

'How do I do what?' would be the appropriate response here, but El has the feeling that he already knows the answer, just as he has the feeling that it is not about him. Sands is about to unleash poison, at least two weeks' worth and maybe even years', and El's presence in the kitchen is no more than a tertiary consideration.

A few seconds pass by in silence before Sands, realizing that El is going to leave him to struggle through this on his own, curls his lip and continues. "How do you lose something that makes up everything that you are and keep shooting, anyway?" Sands's tone is softer than he must appreciate, because he turns the curl of his lip into a nasty smile as he adds, "I only ask, you see, because you're such an expert on the subject."

If El could trade his eyes in exchange from having his family back by his side, he would do it in less time than it takes for his heart to beat twice. If he could trade Sands's, his pulse would not sound once before the deal was done. El's hand drops down to the butt of the gun, still warm from the brush of so many fingers, but his voice betrays nothing. "Then you become something else."

"I kinda liked who I was, thanks." Sands fumbles along in the cabinets until he finds a mug and manages to pour a cup of coffee without burning himself. El watches with a skeptical expression, but Sands does not attempt milk or sugar.

El shrugs and says, "That's too bad. No one gets to go back." He cannot remember the last time that he spoke so long at a stretch, or so freely.

"Only forward," Sands takes a sip of the coffee, hisses as it scalds his tongue, takes another. "Well, that's fabulous. If it turns out that there is a God, someday He and I are going to have a chat. Possibly involving baseball bats."

El snorts. He has no doubt that Sands will try it, too, full of fervor and with only the barest inkling that he can lose far more easily than he can win. And, God help him or damn him, El is tempted to go along for the ride.

"How am I satisfying your curiosity so far?" Sands drawls, bringing El back to the present as he waves his hand over himself, paler and thinner and twisted coat hanger dangerous with his new angles. "Earning my keep?"

El smiles then, a full tilting of his mouth that is gone almost before it can get started and that Sands cannot see in any case. A pearl of something begins to grow in El's stomach. "More easily than I expected."

"I'll be sure to put more energy into my air of mystery."

The second smile lasts longer than the first, long enough to leave the promise of more in its wake, and El knows what this feeling is. He lunges up from the table so quickly that he knocks shattered pieces of crockery to the floor. Sands stiffens at the sound, dropping his hand to the gun that is no longer there and cursing as he remembers its absence.

"What?" Sands demands. "What is it?"

But El leaves the apartment without another word.

---

Morning sunlight lends Carolina's grave an air of terrible hope that will be leached away as the hours move towards afternoon. This morning, El does not care. He hurls the cemetery gate open hard enough to make it rebound against the fence and come back to strike at him. El bats it aside without glancing down; he only has eyes for Carolina. The earth before her headstone is soft underneath his falling knees, more so than graveyard dirt has a right to be against living flesh. The wind sighs around him.

"Carolina." The wind falls still and a pregnant hush cocoons the cemetery. Even the leaves in the highest branches of the trees have ceased their rustling. El would like to think that this means that someone is listening. "I'm losing you." The leaves in the trees rustle sharply, a rebuke if he has ever heard one. "It is true. I don't want to, I…" El pauses, struggling, and ultimately finishes, "I feel it less." Paltry, cowardly words. The wind goes silent once more, and El waits.

When the wind rises again, its tone has changed from Carolina's rustling, energetic force into something new, something that El has not felt in a year of visiting these graves daily. It is buoyant and gentle, rolling around his body and tousling his hair like an overzealous puppy. Natalia had contained within her small body all of her mother's luster and her father's passion, while the world had yet to teach her any of their bite. El closes his eyes and feels benediction kisses raining down on his face.

"Spend a lot of time talking to yourself, do you?"

El opens his eyes and turns towards the sound of the voice, surprised only for a moment to see Sands standing there. "My family," he says.

The devil standing on hallowed ground does not comment, an expression that may even be respect moving across his face before he transforms it into a smirk. The world manages to keep turning on its axis, but barely. Sands doesn't bother with bland apologies, and for that El is glad. He would have to hit him if he tried.

"It feels nice here," Sands says after an eternity that lasts only for a few seconds, tilting his head to listen to the birds that have been singing to each other for hours.

"It is." El rises to his feet and starts for the gate. Evil can only walk across purity for so long before the innocence is irredeemably marred by it; this is the one lesson that El has learned more deeply than any other. Sands is a long stone's throw away from pure evil-El does not know what he is-but his very presence continues to string a sour note through the sanctity of this place.

The wind whips up around Sands before El can reach him, lifting his hair from his neck and turning it into a dark cloud around his face. Sands swears, swats his hair back, and nearly knocks his glasses off. "The fuck-"

A slow, disbelieving smile spreads across El's face as he reaches the gate. "My family," he repeats. "Perhaps tomorrow you can meet them."

End


End file.
