THANKS: to Laura for more Spanish--again, any mistakes after the fact are mine
all mine (just like Johnny) (oh wait, did I say that outloud?)
El Corazon de la Leyenda
Pt 2 of 2 so far
By Garnet
Breathing was an art.
Most people never figured that out. They just relied on the good old involuntary
nervous system to provide and keep right on providing. But anything that could
be done by the unconscious could be done through a conscious application of
will. Which sounded like just so much new age crap, except that what it boiled
down to was just another way of saying you were so taking control of your life,
so not letting the bullshit get you down. Even if you'd just ended up smelling
of it instead of those roses you swear you had on back order. Jingled from my
friend FTD, of course—you had to respect a company logo as light in his loafers
as that, a company who really had you coming and going, from birth to the grave,
so there was no way they didn't have a special bouquet just for fuck-ups like
this one.
Complete with baby's breath and a get out of jail free card.
Pain was an art.
And sure, you were stuck with it, unless of course there were some rather spectacular
drugs in the offing, but that didn't mean you had to feel it just like any other
fucker with two nerves to rub together and not enough sense to get out of the
way of a speeding bullet. You see pain, my friend, like any other form of stimulation,
could be reduced, seduced, and eventually diminished into something intrinsically
neither good nor bad, but something that simply was, something that didn't have
to rule your life. Let alone keep you from doing what needed doing. Unless what
needed doing was someone. Then pain and pleasure were like peanut butter and
jelly, Gene and Ginger, rock and roll—you couldn't have one without the other.
Well, you could, but it wasn't nearly as much fun.
Emotion was an art.
Like pain and breathing, it could be shoved like some freaking round peg into
that proverbial square hole, even though the edges flaked off like so many asbestos
poison paint chips as you twisted and wedged and finally jammed it right in
there. Screaming and wheedling and trying to wriggle its fat ass free the whole
time. Except that you'd been ready for that, no fool you; you'd built that goddamned
box strong, see if you didn't. `Cause it really didn't pay to shirk when you
were talking about such hardened criminals as grief and compassion and sympathy
and regret. Not to mention, the worst screamer of them all…love…like love wasn't
the fucking four letter word to beat all other four letter words.
Except for maybe the one on the other side of the coin. Though, when it came
down to that, you were far more comfortable with hate. Hate was like an old
sweater. Like those slippers you kept tripping over on the way to the john in
the middle of the night. Hate was puppy dog eyes in the window and warm metal
in your fist and the taste of somebody else's blood in your mouth.
And, best of all, hate could keep that last remaining spark warm, when pain
and shock and blood loss were turning everything else in your freaking veins
to a sludgy ice water cocktail that cost too damn much and didn't have enough
alcohol in it to make a monkey drunk.
Of course, words like sociopath and psychopath came trippingly to mind for most
certifiably sane people once you finally managed to cram all that shit you honestly
didn't need into a nice little gift wrapped box for nobody—no help for that
opinion, nothing to do but smile even though your heart was breaking—but, if
you wanted the truth and God help you if you did, there was a big difference
between simply learning to rise above your limitations and denying that they
even existed. Or that they did exist, but they just didn't matter because you
were the biggest baddest meanest motherfucker to have ever drawn breath this
side of the Alamo.
But, you know, back in the good old days when he did a lot more shit just for
kicks, rather than for money and kicks, he'd managed to sneak a peek at his
official file and the bottom line of his psych profile had come as rather less
than a surprise. Well, actually, he'd found it pretty much an incentive. Seasoned
with just the perfect peppery sweet touch of vindication.
Adjustment disorders leading to borderline sociopathic tendencies.
Of course, the Company needed its sociopaths. Every government did. Same as
it needed its computer geeks and its yes men and its suits, just to name a few
who actually made it on to the payroll. Not to mention those really weird guys
strung out on way too much caffeine and not enough sleep who somehow came up
with the best ideas sometime between two and three in the morning on the evening
before half the known world was about to send itself straight to hell.
But then Langley was a grab bag of the strange, an all you can eat smorgasbord
of the exotic and those who seemed so normal that they just about fucking squeaked
when they walked down the halls, a cup of coffee in one hand and a file marked
Top Secret or Code One or simply Orange Listed in the other. And, shock of shocks,
it was those guys you really had to watch out for. Bland-looking at best. Wearing
a cheap forgettable suit at worst. Because what hid behind those bland faces
was never pretty, and cheap and forgettable did not in any way mean that they
didn't know exactly what the dollar could get you.
`Cause cash can buy you a lot of things. A nice place on the beach for one.
Guns. Intell. Pricks. Cunts. Blood. Booze. A convenient little coup de etat.
A piece of someone's soul even.
But, as some joker who couldn't ever have had much of it once said, money can't
buy you everything. Least of all that ever so elusive and entirely too subjective
thing called happiness. Though it sure would have been nice to try.
Rather than just finding yourself lazing around trying to remember how to breathe
around the pain. How to squeeze it into a box so tight that it couldn't get
out again. Along with a few of those more unsightly emotions who had seen their
chance and were trying to make
a break for it.
So, yeah, c'mon then…fucking go for it. `Cause it was no skin off your ass to
jam the fuckers right back in. No problem to break their fingers if you had
to. Just to teach em a lesson, show em who was boss. Who could kill them anytime,
anywhere, once and for all and forever. No fuss, no muss, no regrets.
After all, sociopaths don't give a fuck, right?
Riiiiight…
***
It took him longer than he liked to finally realize that the car had stopped
moving, that someone had shut the engine off. And killed the radio along with
it.
It had become so much a part of him—the sound and the motion and the coarse
texture of all that dust boiling down into his lungs—that the absence of it
made it feel like he'd entered a whole new plane of existence.
Not that this one was any more fun than the last. Just a bit more quiet.
He idly remembered that he'd heard voices at some point. Figured that El had
brought him to somebody, taken him somewhere. It hadn't seemed to matter to
who or where and that should have been a frightening thought. But he must have
left his sense of self preservation back there on the road somewhere, because
it hadn't worried him, not one little bit. After all, what more could they do
to him? What else could they take? A man only had one life to give for his country,
and only five senses, of which one had already been spoken for.
But now that he'd caught up to himself, he realized that he could hear chickens
clucking nearby. He could feel the sun on his face, hot enough already to fry
eggs except that he'd always hated eggs and now would probably have nightmares
about them as well, fuck. Even worse, he could feel the limp strands of his
hair, full of sweat and dust and goodness knows what else as they trailed across
his forehead and into the corner of his mouth. More sweat like a river down
the back of his neck, soaked into his clothes. It smelled sickly, sour. Bad.
Worst of all, he could almost taste it, as he could still taste the faint tang
of his own blood. He couldn't get away from it. He couldn't move. The heat had
him trapped limply against the vinyl seat the Mariachi had dumped him on like
a load of dirty black laundry. At least the pain was no longer a monster eating
at his face, digging its poisoned claws into his arm and leg, but it was sitting
on his chest now all the same. Sucking in each breath like a pet cat gone bad.
Making him feel like he couldn't have moved right then and there to save his
life.
Even as his old friend self-preservation finally limped up to the car and rapped
on the nearest window.
Or it may have just been El, because he heard a mumbled comment, English with
those lovely despairing Spanish undertones, just before the door clicked and
swung out. And familiar hands took hold of him, carefully, almost gently even,
lifting him free of all that sticky sweaty vinyl and bringing him out into the
open air as if he hadn't just called him a fucking mess who hadn't known better
than to bleed all over the car.
Or something like that anyhow.
But a better translation would have to wait, because it was all he could do
not to throw up all over good old El as the other man carried him from sun to
shade and then turned sideways, an even deeper coolness falling over him the
next moment. Boots sounding on
stone. Echoes upon echoes. Other voices intruding now, their rapid Spanish like
a whole crew of skinny chickens scratching on the inside of his head—only every
odd word making any kind of real sense.
Saints…dead…American…doctor…money…Mariachi…
Whose own voice was almost soothing as he answered, as he told them he had money.
Money enough. And why shouldn't the man? There had been fucking loads of cash
back at the palace—more than could easily fit into a dozen tin lunchboxes. Money
enough to pay for a president's death, or for his life. Money that could buy
or sell a country. Money that had been earmarked to buy himself a new face,
a new name, a new dream.
Well, shit…
Guess you really should be careful what you asked for. A hopped up proto-Biblical
god with too much time on his hands or some serene looking saint whose smile
masked a vicious ass sense of humor just might be listening and then there would
you be? Besides sucked down, chewed up, and spit out again at the last to lay
face down on the sand like a fucking beached fish, wondering where all the water
had gone. And why breathing suddenly hurt so damn bad.
Dimly, he felt himself being laid down on something soft and yielding. Felt
El's hands leaving him. And disquiet stirred inside him at being left alone,
making him want to reach out and find that touch again. But he quashed the impulse
before it could give him away. Before it could betray the man who didn't need
anything from anyone, least of all from some Mexican who wasn't near as big
as his legend painted him and who didn't even have a name to call his own.
More voices. Not an argument this time, but something that sounded like prayer.
And he felt the urge to laugh rising—go on, tell God where he was, give the
big guy a second chance to fuck him over. Religion was like a drug anyway. And
he was in good with the local drug dealers. After all, even though Barillo had
dibs on his eyes, goodness knows there was plenty more to go around.
He heard movement, then the sound of a door closing. A moment later, big hands
closed on his shoulders, pinning him down.
"Hey…" he protested.
Other hands touched his arm and then his leg, ghosting across the blood and
bandages there. Finally, they drifted to his face and he jerked away from them.
But they didn't take the clue and he bared his teeth, planning on goddamn taking
a bite out of the next fucker
who got within his reach, even as he heard a familiar voice. Not near him, not
touching him, but in the room all the same.
"They only want to help," El said.
"Fuck that," he hissed. He tried to sit up, but something slipped sideways in
his head and the next he knew he was laying on his side and somebody was holding
his head as half his insides tried to migrate outwards. It was mostly liquid,
but it still hurt like the dickens, and each spasm sent a matching spike of
pain shooting through his skull.
Pain, yeah…it was all in the mind of the beholder…or some shit like that…
But they'd never prepared him for this, the stupid fucks.
When it was finally over, something like about two hundred years later, he was
way past tired, way past doing anything but just hanging there feeling like
so much wet shit. Fuck, he was even too tired to protest as someone brushed
his hair back and peeled the sunglasses off his face. Then, slowly and carefully,
shifted him up and over to lay across hard thighs. His head tucked in the crook
of a warm muscular arm, of someone who smelled of his own hot sweat, of tequila
and cordite.
He wanted to protest. To find picture perfect words for the occasion. The ones
that would make them realize that of all the things he was serious about, revenge
came top of the list. But his body was like lead weight dragging him down and
down and down and his head was buzzing like a live wire. Right in tune with
each breath he struggled to take, each one more effort than the last.
Vaguely, he was aware it was the Mariachi who was holding him. That he was talking
softly in Spanish, rhythmic vibrations that reminded him all over again about
the music that wore this man's face. A face he would never see again. A face
that he would be a damn sight better off remembering than the last sight he
ever had seen.
Fuck it all. He wanted his shades back. He wanted this to just be over. But
he couldn't concentrate enough to move, let alone to try and understand what
the man was saying, even if it was him he was supposed to be talking to, and
worst of all a wave of sick heat was spreading all through him now. Making him
feel even heavier inside, like someone had turned all his bones to lead when
he wasn't looking.
He wanted to toss his cookies again, muchas gracias. But, more than that, he
wanted a gun. A .38, a .45, shit even a fucking .22. He just wanted to feel
the cool weight of one in his hand. To know he could shoot everybody in this
fucking room if he really wanted to.
Fill them full of lead for daring to touch him, for seeing him when he was so
goddamn helpless he couldn't stand it. Because it was a lie, a lie, it was all
a lie…
No one, but no one, came back for seconds on Sheldon Sands. Not if they wanted
to live anyway.
No one, but no one, could hold him like this. Not even a fucker who wanted to
die.
He pushed upwards suddenly, shivering inside and out, trying desperately to
claw his way out of El's arms, but the other man only caught his hands and held
those as well. Strong fingers pinioning his wrists, his pulse beating through
the both of them. Fast and fast, as if, even now, he was running for his very
life.
But he couldn't run. He couldn't move. Because that had been his last hurrah
and he could feel sickness rising up like a tide now, like black water, like
cold blood, and he was drowning in it, even as those strange hands came back
to his face. As they moved across his cheekbones like the insolent fuckers they
were. Before they touched the ridge of his brow. And then finally explored the
ragged sockets where his eyes used to be.
And it hurt…oh God, oh Jesus, oh fuck, man…each soft touch was like a razor
blade scraping across raw flesh. Across raw ruined nerves.
And he was whimpering. He couldn't help it. He couldn't stop it. Even though
he hated himself for it. Even though he hated them for hearing it.
But then those merciless fingers finally left off and the Mariachi let go of
his left wrist and smoothed a hand across his forehead instead, calloused skin
stealing his own sweat and leaving a mortal coolness behind, and somehow that
comforting gesture was even worse than what had come before it.
Tenderness was a joke, doubly so coming from a man like El. And, blind or not,
he could for damn sure see that whatever the punch line to all this was going
to be, he wanted no fucking part of it.
Or of what they might be intending to do with him. Because he could hear them
muttering now, and El was shifting beneath him, taking tight hold of his left
hand again. Pinning them both to the bed beneath him. Even as hands caught his
chin and tilted his head back. And something metallic scraped across his teeth.
Something hot and bitter poured into his mouth.
He spat it back out, or tried to anyway, but they only poured more in and then
his nose was being pinched shut as well and he couldn't help but swallow and
El was murmuring to him and he was coughing and shaking and fighting and choking
and he couldn't see and he couldn't stand it and the stuff was burning his mouth,
burning his throat, and it was all too much. He couldn't take any more.
Until they poured something equally bitter into the empty holes of his eyes
and then he really did scream.
***
There was so much blood.
He couldn't see their faces for all the blood and the dust—which may have been
a curse or a blessing in disguise, he really didn't want to know, he doubted
he would ever want to know—and then he was lost to the dust as well as something
struck him in the chest. As he fell to the ground, a terrible pain blossoming
in his heart, one that no mere bullet could have ever caused.
He was dying. He didn't care.
He wanted to die. There was nothing left.
His wife was dead, his love, the only thing that mattered to him anymore. The
only person who had ever been able to keep him sane.
And his little girl…his little girl…
How could someone have killed her? So much innocence. So much joy.
But men were cruel. And the darkness that lived inside him had proved even crueler.
Even after so many years, even after he had thought he'd put such things as
vengeance and pain behind him, it still returned at the last to claim him. To
claim everyone and
everything good he'd ever touched. And all he could ask was why, why, why…?
Why here, why now, why again? Madre del dios, hadn't he paid his debt already?
Ten times, a hundred, more than he could bear to remember, let alone find forgiveness
for.
What more could the world, or even God, ask of him? He hadn't been a killer
in years. He had put away such things the day he had known love again, when
he realized that he belonged to his lovely wife, body, mind and soul. And, more
telling still, his hands and his heart had, after long yearning years apart,
learned to hold music again, to work life instead of death, and it had been
more than enough. More than he could have ever asked for, at least until his
little daughter had been born.
But then he should have known, he should have remembered.
The guitar had always been his first love, but the gun was a jealous lover at
best. And men were cruel, cruel as the angels who had failed to watch over them,
cruel as God Himself could be, and he should have remembered that most of all.
That sometimes what one couldn't have, one destroyed. That hate was a jealous
mistress as well as a ruthless bitch of a one and would keep on destroying until
there was nothing left but the darkness itself. A darkness that lay like a wedding
veil, like a shroud, obscuring what it could not
conceal, showing him the naked face of love in fallen white lace and spattered
rosaries of blood.
Leaving him wanting to do nothing more than die. Breathing in burning dust and
gunpowder and swallowing down the bitter wine of his own sins, which had never
been forgiven after all. Which never could be forgiven.
Leaving him to wander the earth alone once more, weeping though he no longer
knew how to cry. And whether he was mad or sane these days he didn't much care
either, anymore than he knew whether he was truly alive or dead. Just that he
had been reduced to a shell of a man, la alma del Diablo.
He woke with a start…the taste of blood and dust like cheap communion wine in
his mouth. Dead…they were all dead…and he was dead, too…just another el muerto
caminando…llorando para el pasado…
"About time you woke up," a voice said, lovely, rough, and smooth, and way the
fuck too close for comfort.
He turned his head a little and realized that he could feel the other man's
breath on his cheek. That they were sharing what felt like a bed together. That
it seemed they had shared other things as well, like El Mariachi's happy little
dream of watching his whole fucking familia getting blown away.
Like boo hoo, he could cry for the man if he actually gave a shit. If he still
had the ability to cry, let alone a set of matching tear ducts. Which he didn't
and he couldn't and who gave a flying fuck anyway?
"Where?" he asked. Not that it really mattered. As long as nobody was actively
shooting at him right now, one lousy rat hole in this country was pretty much
as good as the next.
"Someplace safe," came the answer.
Well, that was just peachy, but as far as information for information's sake
it left a lot to be desired. El had obviously never filed a progress report
in his life. Well, actually, he rarely had either in a very long time now and
those he had he tended to fudge on, but that wasn't the point.
"I suppose you like feeling the hero," he said. "But I didn't ask for your help."
"No," El replied, and then went silent again. So silent, that if he hadn't been
able to hear—let alone feel—him breathing he might have thought the man was
no longer even there.
"Fuck," he whispered and turned his head away again. It still felt heavy, but
not like before. Instead, the weight seemed to be coming from something pressing
down on his face, something filling those glaringly empty holes. Something that
had replaced the pain with a mockingly cool numbness.
He reached up and touched a knotted linen strip—it was holding a thicker pad
tightly across his face. They had tied it off around the back of his head, and
tied his hair back as well. Hair which now felt silky-smooth and clean. In fact,
he felt cool all over and squeaky clean, just the faint smell of soap and the
even fainter scent of incense surrounding him.
Oh, joy of joys. Newly washed skin and hair, something to take the pain away,
fresh, loose-fitting clothes on his body, and crisp sheets beneath him. With
El lying right beside him. A big ol' Mariachi security blanket, as if he wasn't
in as much danger from the man next to him as from the guys who'd cheerfully
been trying to chase him down and put a few more holes in him when he wasn't
looking.
Okay, so it was a real logic buster. Which one of these things didn't belong?
Well, besides former free ranging agent of chaos, Sheldon Sands, of course…
"Water?" El suddenly asked.
He nodded slightly, his hand falling again. He could feel fresh bandages on
his arm and leg and the wounds there felt numb as well. Which was one blessing
he could count right now, though more logic suggested it wasn't likely to last.
But anything but anything that
could make the pain go away, even for a little while, was like a slice of pure
shit fire heaven. Though, he had to admit that whatever the fuck they had done
to him first had certainly felt a lot more like hell.
The bed tipped and tilted and then he heard the padding of bare feet across
the room. Feeling tired, but nothing like that complete and utter exhaustion
that had claimed him earlier, he slowly pushed himself up to sit against the
headboard of the bed. It was heavy
carved wood and his fingers had time to trace out the bare outlines of a cross
before El came back and took his hand, pressed cool metal into it. He brought
the shallow cup to his mouth and took a mouthful, only to spit it back out again.
"Shit!"
El's fingers closed around his and brought the cup back to his lips.
"It's good water," the other man insisted. "They have a natural mineral spring
here. The taste takes some getting used to, but they claim it has healing properties."
"Of course they would," he muttered.
"Drink," El said. "You need all the miracles you can get."
He grimaced, but forced himself to down all of the offered cup. It was foul,
almost as bitter as the stuff he'd been forced to drink before, but he was thirsty
and the Mariachi didn't seem in the mood for him to argue. Which would ordinarily
have been an invitation to do just that, but for the fact that the other man
was already crawling back into bed with him.
"Not that I'm objecting, mind you," he said, letting the empty cup come to rest
between them. "But what do you hope to get out of this? Besides the pleasure
of my company, of course."
"Charming as it is," El replied dryly. "I would have left you there, if not
for one thing."
"Now we come to it," he said, smiling just a little.
Knowing was always better than not knowing. Most people didn't want to know
and look where it had gotten them. Wandering around in a daze thinking that
they were real and alive and safe, and that the world was as they thought it
was and that things always worked out for the best in the end. Just in time
for the closing credits.
"You owe me," the other man said. "You used me, and now you owe me. You owe
me a life."
"Fuck that," he replied, his voice sounding sharp even to his own ears. "You
did what you did because you wanted to. Because of your old amigo, General Marquez.
Because you wanted to kill his ass. I just gave you a push in the fucker's direction.
A little added
incentive. Don't blame the messenger, Paco. They told me you were the best,
but they didn't tell me you were stupid."
"Not stupid," El corrected softly. "Just…tired. The men you sent to collect
me, they killed a man in my village. Did you know that? A man who had never
harmed anyone. A man who only made guitars. It is his life you owe me. His life
you need to repay."
"You want me to make guitars?"
"No," the other man said, and now he could sense him moving closer, the bed
creaking beneath them, one hand sliding up to curl around the side of his neck,
the other coming to rest in the hollow of his throat. A thumb on his pulse and
close, so very close that he could feel El's warm breath feeding his open mouth.
Close enough for the other man to have kissed him if he wanted to, or strangled
him with his bare hands if it came to that. Which it very well might.
"No," the Mariachi repeated. "I need you to restore the balance."