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Entry tags:
FIC: Lioness, Rampant
TITLE: Lioness, Rampant
FANDOM: Once Upon A Time In Mexico
CHARACTERS: Ajedrez, Chiclet Boy, Ramirez, Sanchez
PAIRINGS: past Ajedrez/Sands, Ajedrez/OC
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 3, 270
DISCLAIMER: The sandbox and characters belong to Robert Rodriguez. I’m just playing for fun, and am receiving no profit. Please don’t sue, I’m broke.
WARNING: Contains one murder, and is a WiP
NOTES: This is an AU set post-canon, as if Ajedrez survived being shot by Sands at the end of the movie. This Ajedrez is also not the same version currently found in millliways_bar. This is also UNFINISHED.
Lioness, Rampant
you fucking little monkey stand upsee anything anythyingyoulike
nononono
laughter his lips taste of dirtandblood can smell it
see anything anythingat all baby sorry
i’m sorry
painsharp god it hurts it hurts helpmepleasesomeonegod oh god
forgiveme
No
--
You wake to a pale blue ceiling. Low and soothing, with sunlight dancing with lace-curtain shadows but still you frown. You remember black and brown, the sharp scent of blood, and when you turn your head you can see where the beeps are coming from. The lights go up and down in time to your heart and that’s reassuring.
Reassuring enough that you move your head back and close your eyes, ignoring drips and pains and the fact that it hurts to breathe to just let yourself fall. Hell wouldn’t be a hospital.
Would it?
--
Crying. A child crying. Why won’t the mother shut it up where is the mother you open your mouth to call for her and feel betrayal’s sharp stab when she goes to the sobbing baby instead of you. Screams and moans of pain and loss and grief and
mama, mama, where are you, a child’s wail in the dark maaaamaaaaaaa
and then you remember that she is dead. Everyone is dead. So you start to scream, but you can’t get enough air and the world is nothing more than lights.
--
Someone mentions a fever. What fever? This isn’t a fever; this is a fire baking you from the inside out. Stupid fucking doctors, don’t they know that the lowest circle in Hell is reserved for traitors?
--
Sometimes, you scream. Sometimes, you sleep.
Sometimes, you stare at the ceiling and pray that the bed stops spinning because it’s going to toss you right onto the floor in a second.
Nothing you can do except grit your teeth and clench the sheets and try not to cry because you are your father’s daughter and a Barillo never cries. You think, barillo and ajedrez and your confusion lasts until the nurse slides another needle into your hand.
--
When you open your eyes this time it’s hot and humid. Even the curtains are still. You feel sticky and disgusting, aching all over. There are voices, other voices, soft and conversational so you can’t make them out, but at least the kid’s shut up.
Or maybe it died.
A mental shake and you start taking stock. An unfamiliar bed. An unfamiliar room. A drip in your arm and a steady beeping in time to your heart. You want to sit up, but the pain in your chest is jumping up and down and screaming that that wouldn’t be a very clever thing to do.
So you just lie there, staring at the ceiling and carefully keeping your mind blank as you wait for one of the voices to come your way.
The room is full, still, and there really is nothing to do but wait for the doctor. As it turns out, you are almost dozing off when she comes around. An older woman, she somehow manages to look frazzled, tired, and perfectly calm all at once.
It has to be the hair.
You force your eyes to stay open and look up at her. She manages a brief smile.
“Good to see that you’ve managed to pull through, señora.”
You try to talk and end up coughing. Voice clawing your throat, eyes watering, you manage to get out,
“What’s wrong?”
Internal damage. Blood-loss. Infection and a fever and something about your spine. You can’t tell if the bullet missed, or hit and did no damage.
It doesn’t matter. You are alive.
You smile, or at least try to. The expression twists and your voice is a dry rasp as you ask,
“When can I leave?”
--
Too soon for their liking, as it turns out, but you’ve never been fond of forced inactivity. The hospital is still crowded after the attempted coup d’etat and one night when you feel able you sneak out. Steal some clothes, find your guns in the cupboard in reception still with their silencers, open a window and drop to the street below.
Somehow, it was easier when you were fifteen and without stitches. You stagger back against the wall, pressing your hand against the wound and just concentrate on breathing.
In and out, in and out, in and out and everything will be fine.
And, yeah, the tears are just from the pain.
--
You make your way back to your apartment, walking until you find a car old enough to be easily stolen. Parking it in the alley out the back, you climb onto the roof and pull yourself over the top of the wall, pausing only to brace yourself as you drop lightly onto the wooden table in the patio.
It’s still there, and you take this as a good sign. You have no idea how long you were out of it, but you know that no one recognized you. False name, obscure hospital, and surely your (former) friends and colleagues have better things to do then do anything more then write you off as dead. The key is buried in the cactus pot and you can’t help but yelp a curse as your hand gets scored. You bring your hand up and suck at the wound; blood and dirt and it tastes like Sands’s mouth that one last time.
That one last time, where you kissed him. Where he tried to kill you and damn near succeeded. You could think, fair’s fair. You could think, well, I betrayed him first and then I was going to put him out of his misery and, well…
But you don’t. You whisper, “And fuck you too, Sands,” and let yourself in.
--
Your apartment’s been searched, that much is obvious even with the lights off. Drawers pulled out and the clock on the wall is crooked in the moonlight. Slowly, you slide a handgun out and flick the safety off. Slowly, you make your way through the kitchen and stop in the arched doorway.
Someone is sitting on your couch.
Someone who hears you. Someone who turns his head and calls out, “Ajedrez?”
With little conscious thought, and entirely without emotion, you pull the trigger and he falls silent.
“My name, Sanchez,” you inform him, gently, “is Barillo.”
He had never been terribly good with the details, so you shrug and leave the room. Inspecting the rest of your small apartment, it’s the same story wherever you look; draws and cupboards pulled open, books on the floor, and there is dust everywhere. You don’t bother tidying up, you aren’t staying.
Well, not staying long. Just long enough to change into your own clothes and pack some things. You pick up a jacket that Sands had left on your bedroom floor God knows when, and press your face against it. The cloth smells of smoke and alcohol, of cologne and sweat and him and with barely more conscious thought then when you killed Sanchez you slip the jacket on.
It’s cool enough for it, anyway.
Picking up a lighter and a mostly-empty packet of cigarettes, you make your way back to the living room, swiping up a bottle of tequila along the way. Dumping your gun on the coffee table next to the bottle, you fall back onto the couch and glance at Sanchez. You’ve turned on a light, just one, and it makes the blood on his face glitter like rubies dipped in black paint. The bullet had entered through his cheek and made a mess of things along the way.
You study him for a moment, pulling out one of Sands’s cigarettes.
“Closed coffin for you, I’m afraid,” you tell him as you toss the pack next to the gun and tequila. Your voice sounds cheerful, tastelessly cheerful, but it’s not as if Sanchez can complain.
--
You are drunk. Not surprising, really; you can’t remember the last time that you ate, and you are just drinking and drinking. Sometimes you laugh, but you never cry.
A Barillo never cries (where people can see).
You talk, like you used to. You could always talk to Sanchez. Poor Sanchez. Poor old Sanchez, always so good at listening, always so patient and he had the worst luck in girlfriends.
You remember Sands, and his screams to your helpless (hysterical) laughter, and your sigh turns into a short laugh.
“Well, not the worst taste, amigo.”
You think that he looks faintly reproachful, and you can’t stop laughing. It’s really not that funny, some part of you thinks. It’s twisted and it’s fucked up and it’s true.
That’s why it is funny, another part argues and you are still giggling as you reach for the bottle again. There’s nothing left, which makes you glare and curse but as you contemplate moving your head starts to swim. So you just stay there and curl your legs up, trying to get comfortable. The blood on Sanchez’s face has long since turned black in the dull light and it reminds you of him. Sands.
You smile, soft and sad.
“You guys all hated him, I know,” you say then. “Annoying shit and I wouldn’t go out with any of you. Bad work policy and all of that, and I couldn’t hide from you. Not all the time. I could from him, though. Gringo, read about Barillo’s daughter and dismiss her as missing. Useless.
But so did you, so maybe I would have been okay.
It’s just that…I don’t know. He was so annoying, so smug and brilliant. It was either go out with him or kill him, and it wasn’t as if I planned for it to go on for so long, did I? Just an affair, enjoy the sex and he was good. Got to be habit, maybe.” Your voice has been getting softer and softer and you hate it.
“He made me laugh,” you say at last, and it sounds weak even to you. But it’s true, he made you laugh. He made you cry and rage and throw things in frustration. He made you coffee in the mornings and let you top in sex and he gave you a gun once for no reason at all.
And he made you laugh.
Your lips twist and move, and you can feel your face crumple. “Dammit,” you whisper, rubbing at your eyes with the sleeve of Sands’s jacket. “Damn, damn, damn,” but it doesn’t help. You have tears running down your face, and your shoulders are shaking because you hate him, you hate him so damn much because he offered you the world and you didn’t, couldn’t, take it. You hate him for staring at you with those disbelieving eyes and you hate him for not dying. But most of all?
You hate him because he made you laugh, and you had loved him for it.
(and Barillos don’t cry where anyone can see, but the dead can’t talk so maybe it’s okay)
--
At some point, you doze off. You don’t dream, but when you wake up you are stiff and sore and disorientated. There is grey light coming in from the window and you can’t remember when you fell asleep. Blearily, you rub your head and glance around. You catch sight of Sanchez, and he looks absolutely ghastly. Blood and bone and you wince, slightly.
“Perdón, Cristobal,” you say, softly, touching his shoulder as you move to get your backpack. “Perdón, but you should not have come here.”
Absently, you wonder why he did. Was he waiting for you, or just remembering? A shrug and you leave through the front door as if everything is normal.
He’s not your problem anymore.
--
You check into a nearby motel, marvelling faintly at your lack of hangover. Not that you ever really got bad ones. Of course, your head may be fine, but you ache deep inside from the bullet wound and something is telling you that you over-did it yesterday.
Locking the door and shoving a chair underneath the handle, you swallow some painkillers and fall asleep almost as soon as you slide into bed.
This time, you don’t wake up for quite some time.
--
You dream. You dream of nonsense things, vivid and horrific things that make no sense.
You try to wake up, again and again. Make the dreams-that-aren’t-quite-nightmares stop.
You never can.
--
You wake, eventually. You shower and change, pay your bill and leave. Eat in a café somewhere, read the newspapers to get up to date, listen to gossip in the streets. Your father is dead, you learn without surprise and possibly without grief. The cartel is falling apart, but rumour is that your cousin Iago has taken control. You wish him luck when you hear, and then forget about it. The Americans are looking for Sands, whether to save him or arrest him it isn’t quite clear. You smirk without humour and wish them the same luck that you wished on your cousin.
You’re dead, so says the rumour. Well, missing presumed dead and someone has finally connected the dots between Azora Ajedrez and Barillo’s only child.
Took them fucking long enough.
--
The days and weeks take on a pattern. In the mornings you leave, go out onto the streets. Eat in cafés and read the newspapers to keep current, you browse the markets for new clothes and other such things that even if you do buy you never keep for long (money isn’t a problem, not with the amount of accounts you have under various names). You go and check into another hotel, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep reluctantly takes you under. Sometimes you stay one night, sometimes three.
Three is your limit, though.
You eat and you sleep, shower and smoke. Sometimes you read a trashy paperback that you picked up that morning. Sometimes you throw the books in the bin, others you put in the top draw of the bedside table with the Bible.
Once, you set a romance on fire, and then left before anyone noticed the smoke.
You think about getting out, of leaving Culiacán and just taking off somewhere. The Yucatan region, maybe, or perhaps even another country. Belize, Honduras, Columbia, Argentina. Catch a flight off the American continents and go somewhere new. You’ve heard that there is a temple in Sri Lanka entirely taken over by monkeys, and you think that you’d like to see it. You stand on the edge of town and look at the farmers driving in and out. It’d be easy enough to hitch a road with one of them. Easy enough to smile and charm in an instant.
So easy.
You turn around, and walk straight back the way you came.
--
Sometimes, you think that you really are dead. Like that American movie with Bruce Willis and the boy who could see ghosts. Maybe Sands actually killed you, and you are just hallucinating that people can hear you when you speak. Make it up in your twisted little brain because you are actually a ghost who doesn’t know it yet.
You wonder if that would explain why you can’t bring yourself to leave.
You wonder if you could haunt your ex-boyfriend for the rest of his miserable life, make him jump because he has no eyes and you’re there anyway.
And then you wonder why people stare as you start to laugh.
--
You buy a guitar one day, just on a whim. You haven’t played in years, and anyway you’ve always preferred the cello. But the woman at the stall smiles at you even as you start to melt back into the crowd.
It feels like a very long time since someone has smiled at you like that.
--
Her name, you learn, is Lupe. Lupe Velez, like the actress. She has a dark Madonna face with long dark brown hair, and tattooed around her belly-button is a red rose in full bloom. Lupe owns a narrow townhouse near the markets with flowers, vines, and a little balcony that overlooks the street. You learn that her bed is old and wide, that her hair gets utterly everywhere, and that she makes the best coffee that you’ve ever tasted. You learn that she has never married, and that the paintings in the house are hers.
You tell her that your name is Maria, and in the morning you leave.
--
You are browsing a market when the real world starts to creep into your dreamy post-survival state. The plaza is bustling and crowded, but you’ve got a good memory for faces and you remember his.
(FBI… or he was, anyway)
Ramirez. Jorge Ramirez, and you hit him over the head with your M-16 before tying him up in a chair. You are genuinely at a loss as to how he managed to survive that day, but here he is in the Sunday sun, talking to a boy in a yellow t-shirt.
He looks up, but you just smile and vanish into the crowd.
You mane of brown hair has been tamed by a French-braid, and you are wearing big ethnic earrings you picked up in the market with Sands’ brown jacket; Ramirez has only seen you twice in person, once when you were a girl in San Antonio and the other on that day, briefly, before you left. You are counting on him remembering the hair and the stark black clothes, not your actual face.
Counting on that, and the fact that nearly everyone thinks you’re dead.
--
Partly out of curiosity, partly out of intuition (and partly out of a burning desire to know), you hang around that part of town to try and spy him again. Sands had been messing with the man’s head, after all, and maybe he still is. Just like him, you think as you gnaw on your bottom lip. Poke and annoy as far as a person can handle it, and still have them break his fall.
He’d done it often enough with you, after all.
--
You see the boy, the one in the yellow t-shirt. He hangs around Ramirez and you wonder where his parents are. Ramirez helps him with his homework in the café, sometimes, and you wonder where his wife is.
Your answer to both is ‘probably dead’.
You wonder where Sands is, and your answer is a rather unhelpful ‘around’.
Well, it was your grandmother who had been the witch in the family, not you.
--
You contemplate taking that up, tarot-cards and palm-readings and voodoo.
Well, just for a night.
Guns are faster.
--
In the end, it is the boy in the yellow t-shirt who leads you to your ex-boyfriend, not Ramirez. He comes up to you one day as you sit in front of the church, trying to remember how to play the guitar.
“You aren’t very good,” he says informs you, as if you didn’t know. You glance up at him, squinting against the sun.
“Well, that’s why I’m practicing,” you tell him. And then you smile wryly. “Do you normally go up to strangers and tell them that they can’t play?”
“Sometimes.”
You look at him very seriously, for all that inside you are laughing.
“Why?”
“Well, it’s true.”
“And that’s important to you, is it?”
“Yes.”
“May you always think so, chico.”
“My name is Miguel.”
“Miguel it is then.” And then you smile at him, at Miguel with the bicycle and yellow t-shirts and belief in the truth. “I’m Alma.”
--
FANDOM: Once Upon A Time In Mexico
CHARACTERS: Ajedrez, Chiclet Boy, Ramirez, Sanchez
PAIRINGS: past Ajedrez/Sands, Ajedrez/OC
RATING: R
WORD COUNT: 3, 270
DISCLAIMER: The sandbox and characters belong to Robert Rodriguez. I’m just playing for fun, and am receiving no profit. Please don’t sue, I’m broke.
WARNING: Contains one murder, and is a WiP
NOTES: This is an AU set post-canon, as if Ajedrez survived being shot by Sands at the end of the movie. This Ajedrez is also not the same version currently found in millliways_bar. This is also UNFINISHED.
you fucking little monkey stand upsee anything anythyingyoulike
nononono
laughter his lips taste of dirtandblood can smell it
see anything anythingat all baby sorry
i’m sorry
painsharp god it hurts it hurts helpmepleasesomeonegod oh god
forgiveme
No
--
You wake to a pale blue ceiling. Low and soothing, with sunlight dancing with lace-curtain shadows but still you frown. You remember black and brown, the sharp scent of blood, and when you turn your head you can see where the beeps are coming from. The lights go up and down in time to your heart and that’s reassuring.
Reassuring enough that you move your head back and close your eyes, ignoring drips and pains and the fact that it hurts to breathe to just let yourself fall. Hell wouldn’t be a hospital.
Would it?
--
Crying. A child crying. Why won’t the mother shut it up where is the mother you open your mouth to call for her and feel betrayal’s sharp stab when she goes to the sobbing baby instead of you. Screams and moans of pain and loss and grief and
mama, mama, where are you, a child’s wail in the dark maaaamaaaaaaa
and then you remember that she is dead. Everyone is dead. So you start to scream, but you can’t get enough air and the world is nothing more than lights.
--
Someone mentions a fever. What fever? This isn’t a fever; this is a fire baking you from the inside out. Stupid fucking doctors, don’t they know that the lowest circle in Hell is reserved for traitors?
--
Sometimes, you scream. Sometimes, you sleep.
Sometimes, you stare at the ceiling and pray that the bed stops spinning because it’s going to toss you right onto the floor in a second.
Nothing you can do except grit your teeth and clench the sheets and try not to cry because you are your father’s daughter and a Barillo never cries. You think, barillo and ajedrez and your confusion lasts until the nurse slides another needle into your hand.
--
When you open your eyes this time it’s hot and humid. Even the curtains are still. You feel sticky and disgusting, aching all over. There are voices, other voices, soft and conversational so you can’t make them out, but at least the kid’s shut up.
Or maybe it died.
A mental shake and you start taking stock. An unfamiliar bed. An unfamiliar room. A drip in your arm and a steady beeping in time to your heart. You want to sit up, but the pain in your chest is jumping up and down and screaming that that wouldn’t be a very clever thing to do.
So you just lie there, staring at the ceiling and carefully keeping your mind blank as you wait for one of the voices to come your way.
The room is full, still, and there really is nothing to do but wait for the doctor. As it turns out, you are almost dozing off when she comes around. An older woman, she somehow manages to look frazzled, tired, and perfectly calm all at once.
It has to be the hair.
You force your eyes to stay open and look up at her. She manages a brief smile.
“Good to see that you’ve managed to pull through, señora.”
You try to talk and end up coughing. Voice clawing your throat, eyes watering, you manage to get out,
“What’s wrong?”
Internal damage. Blood-loss. Infection and a fever and something about your spine. You can’t tell if the bullet missed, or hit and did no damage.
It doesn’t matter. You are alive.
You smile, or at least try to. The expression twists and your voice is a dry rasp as you ask,
“When can I leave?”
--
Too soon for their liking, as it turns out, but you’ve never been fond of forced inactivity. The hospital is still crowded after the attempted coup d’etat and one night when you feel able you sneak out. Steal some clothes, find your guns in the cupboard in reception still with their silencers, open a window and drop to the street below.
Somehow, it was easier when you were fifteen and without stitches. You stagger back against the wall, pressing your hand against the wound and just concentrate on breathing.
In and out, in and out, in and out and everything will be fine.
And, yeah, the tears are just from the pain.
--
You make your way back to your apartment, walking until you find a car old enough to be easily stolen. Parking it in the alley out the back, you climb onto the roof and pull yourself over the top of the wall, pausing only to brace yourself as you drop lightly onto the wooden table in the patio.
It’s still there, and you take this as a good sign. You have no idea how long you were out of it, but you know that no one recognized you. False name, obscure hospital, and surely your (former) friends and colleagues have better things to do then do anything more then write you off as dead. The key is buried in the cactus pot and you can’t help but yelp a curse as your hand gets scored. You bring your hand up and suck at the wound; blood and dirt and it tastes like Sands’s mouth that one last time.
That one last time, where you kissed him. Where he tried to kill you and damn near succeeded. You could think, fair’s fair. You could think, well, I betrayed him first and then I was going to put him out of his misery and, well…
But you don’t. You whisper, “And fuck you too, Sands,” and let yourself in.
--
Your apartment’s been searched, that much is obvious even with the lights off. Drawers pulled out and the clock on the wall is crooked in the moonlight. Slowly, you slide a handgun out and flick the safety off. Slowly, you make your way through the kitchen and stop in the arched doorway.
Someone is sitting on your couch.
Someone who hears you. Someone who turns his head and calls out, “Ajedrez?”
With little conscious thought, and entirely without emotion, you pull the trigger and he falls silent.
“My name, Sanchez,” you inform him, gently, “is Barillo.”
He had never been terribly good with the details, so you shrug and leave the room. Inspecting the rest of your small apartment, it’s the same story wherever you look; draws and cupboards pulled open, books on the floor, and there is dust everywhere. You don’t bother tidying up, you aren’t staying.
Well, not staying long. Just long enough to change into your own clothes and pack some things. You pick up a jacket that Sands had left on your bedroom floor God knows when, and press your face against it. The cloth smells of smoke and alcohol, of cologne and sweat and him and with barely more conscious thought then when you killed Sanchez you slip the jacket on.
It’s cool enough for it, anyway.
Picking up a lighter and a mostly-empty packet of cigarettes, you make your way back to the living room, swiping up a bottle of tequila along the way. Dumping your gun on the coffee table next to the bottle, you fall back onto the couch and glance at Sanchez. You’ve turned on a light, just one, and it makes the blood on his face glitter like rubies dipped in black paint. The bullet had entered through his cheek and made a mess of things along the way.
You study him for a moment, pulling out one of Sands’s cigarettes.
“Closed coffin for you, I’m afraid,” you tell him as you toss the pack next to the gun and tequila. Your voice sounds cheerful, tastelessly cheerful, but it’s not as if Sanchez can complain.
--
You are drunk. Not surprising, really; you can’t remember the last time that you ate, and you are just drinking and drinking. Sometimes you laugh, but you never cry.
A Barillo never cries (where people can see).
You talk, like you used to. You could always talk to Sanchez. Poor Sanchez. Poor old Sanchez, always so good at listening, always so patient and he had the worst luck in girlfriends.
You remember Sands, and his screams to your helpless (hysterical) laughter, and your sigh turns into a short laugh.
“Well, not the worst taste, amigo.”
You think that he looks faintly reproachful, and you can’t stop laughing. It’s really not that funny, some part of you thinks. It’s twisted and it’s fucked up and it’s true.
That’s why it is funny, another part argues and you are still giggling as you reach for the bottle again. There’s nothing left, which makes you glare and curse but as you contemplate moving your head starts to swim. So you just stay there and curl your legs up, trying to get comfortable. The blood on Sanchez’s face has long since turned black in the dull light and it reminds you of him. Sands.
You smile, soft and sad.
“You guys all hated him, I know,” you say then. “Annoying shit and I wouldn’t go out with any of you. Bad work policy and all of that, and I couldn’t hide from you. Not all the time. I could from him, though. Gringo, read about Barillo’s daughter and dismiss her as missing. Useless.
But so did you, so maybe I would have been okay.
It’s just that…I don’t know. He was so annoying, so smug and brilliant. It was either go out with him or kill him, and it wasn’t as if I planned for it to go on for so long, did I? Just an affair, enjoy the sex and he was good. Got to be habit, maybe.” Your voice has been getting softer and softer and you hate it.
“He made me laugh,” you say at last, and it sounds weak even to you. But it’s true, he made you laugh. He made you cry and rage and throw things in frustration. He made you coffee in the mornings and let you top in sex and he gave you a gun once for no reason at all.
And he made you laugh.
Your lips twist and move, and you can feel your face crumple. “Dammit,” you whisper, rubbing at your eyes with the sleeve of Sands’s jacket. “Damn, damn, damn,” but it doesn’t help. You have tears running down your face, and your shoulders are shaking because you hate him, you hate him so damn much because he offered you the world and you didn’t, couldn’t, take it. You hate him for staring at you with those disbelieving eyes and you hate him for not dying. But most of all?
You hate him because he made you laugh, and you had loved him for it.
(and Barillos don’t cry where anyone can see, but the dead can’t talk so maybe it’s okay)
--
At some point, you doze off. You don’t dream, but when you wake up you are stiff and sore and disorientated. There is grey light coming in from the window and you can’t remember when you fell asleep. Blearily, you rub your head and glance around. You catch sight of Sanchez, and he looks absolutely ghastly. Blood and bone and you wince, slightly.
“Perdón, Cristobal,” you say, softly, touching his shoulder as you move to get your backpack. “Perdón, but you should not have come here.”
Absently, you wonder why he did. Was he waiting for you, or just remembering? A shrug and you leave through the front door as if everything is normal.
He’s not your problem anymore.
--
You check into a nearby motel, marvelling faintly at your lack of hangover. Not that you ever really got bad ones. Of course, your head may be fine, but you ache deep inside from the bullet wound and something is telling you that you over-did it yesterday.
Locking the door and shoving a chair underneath the handle, you swallow some painkillers and fall asleep almost as soon as you slide into bed.
This time, you don’t wake up for quite some time.
--
You dream. You dream of nonsense things, vivid and horrific things that make no sense.
You try to wake up, again and again. Make the dreams-that-aren’t-quite-nightmares stop.
You never can.
--
You wake, eventually. You shower and change, pay your bill and leave. Eat in a café somewhere, read the newspapers to get up to date, listen to gossip in the streets. Your father is dead, you learn without surprise and possibly without grief. The cartel is falling apart, but rumour is that your cousin Iago has taken control. You wish him luck when you hear, and then forget about it. The Americans are looking for Sands, whether to save him or arrest him it isn’t quite clear. You smirk without humour and wish them the same luck that you wished on your cousin.
You’re dead, so says the rumour. Well, missing presumed dead and someone has finally connected the dots between Azora Ajedrez and Barillo’s only child.
Took them fucking long enough.
--
The days and weeks take on a pattern. In the mornings you leave, go out onto the streets. Eat in cafés and read the newspapers to keep current, you browse the markets for new clothes and other such things that even if you do buy you never keep for long (money isn’t a problem, not with the amount of accounts you have under various names). You go and check into another hotel, lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling until sleep reluctantly takes you under. Sometimes you stay one night, sometimes three.
Three is your limit, though.
You eat and you sleep, shower and smoke. Sometimes you read a trashy paperback that you picked up that morning. Sometimes you throw the books in the bin, others you put in the top draw of the bedside table with the Bible.
Once, you set a romance on fire, and then left before anyone noticed the smoke.
You think about getting out, of leaving Culiacán and just taking off somewhere. The Yucatan region, maybe, or perhaps even another country. Belize, Honduras, Columbia, Argentina. Catch a flight off the American continents and go somewhere new. You’ve heard that there is a temple in Sri Lanka entirely taken over by monkeys, and you think that you’d like to see it. You stand on the edge of town and look at the farmers driving in and out. It’d be easy enough to hitch a road with one of them. Easy enough to smile and charm in an instant.
So easy.
You turn around, and walk straight back the way you came.
--
Sometimes, you think that you really are dead. Like that American movie with Bruce Willis and the boy who could see ghosts. Maybe Sands actually killed you, and you are just hallucinating that people can hear you when you speak. Make it up in your twisted little brain because you are actually a ghost who doesn’t know it yet.
You wonder if that would explain why you can’t bring yourself to leave.
You wonder if you could haunt your ex-boyfriend for the rest of his miserable life, make him jump because he has no eyes and you’re there anyway.
And then you wonder why people stare as you start to laugh.
--
You buy a guitar one day, just on a whim. You haven’t played in years, and anyway you’ve always preferred the cello. But the woman at the stall smiles at you even as you start to melt back into the crowd.
It feels like a very long time since someone has smiled at you like that.
--
Her name, you learn, is Lupe. Lupe Velez, like the actress. She has a dark Madonna face with long dark brown hair, and tattooed around her belly-button is a red rose in full bloom. Lupe owns a narrow townhouse near the markets with flowers, vines, and a little balcony that overlooks the street. You learn that her bed is old and wide, that her hair gets utterly everywhere, and that she makes the best coffee that you’ve ever tasted. You learn that she has never married, and that the paintings in the house are hers.
You tell her that your name is Maria, and in the morning you leave.
--
You are browsing a market when the real world starts to creep into your dreamy post-survival state. The plaza is bustling and crowded, but you’ve got a good memory for faces and you remember his.
(FBI… or he was, anyway)
Ramirez. Jorge Ramirez, and you hit him over the head with your M-16 before tying him up in a chair. You are genuinely at a loss as to how he managed to survive that day, but here he is in the Sunday sun, talking to a boy in a yellow t-shirt.
He looks up, but you just smile and vanish into the crowd.
You mane of brown hair has been tamed by a French-braid, and you are wearing big ethnic earrings you picked up in the market with Sands’ brown jacket; Ramirez has only seen you twice in person, once when you were a girl in San Antonio and the other on that day, briefly, before you left. You are counting on him remembering the hair and the stark black clothes, not your actual face.
Counting on that, and the fact that nearly everyone thinks you’re dead.
--
Partly out of curiosity, partly out of intuition (and partly out of a burning desire to know), you hang around that part of town to try and spy him again. Sands had been messing with the man’s head, after all, and maybe he still is. Just like him, you think as you gnaw on your bottom lip. Poke and annoy as far as a person can handle it, and still have them break his fall.
He’d done it often enough with you, after all.
--
You see the boy, the one in the yellow t-shirt. He hangs around Ramirez and you wonder where his parents are. Ramirez helps him with his homework in the café, sometimes, and you wonder where his wife is.
Your answer to both is ‘probably dead’.
You wonder where Sands is, and your answer is a rather unhelpful ‘around’.
Well, it was your grandmother who had been the witch in the family, not you.
--
You contemplate taking that up, tarot-cards and palm-readings and voodoo.
Well, just for a night.
Guns are faster.
--
In the end, it is the boy in the yellow t-shirt who leads you to your ex-boyfriend, not Ramirez. He comes up to you one day as you sit in front of the church, trying to remember how to play the guitar.
“You aren’t very good,” he says informs you, as if you didn’t know. You glance up at him, squinting against the sun.
“Well, that’s why I’m practicing,” you tell him. And then you smile wryly. “Do you normally go up to strangers and tell them that they can’t play?”
“Sometimes.”
You look at him very seriously, for all that inside you are laughing.
“Why?”
“Well, it’s true.”
“And that’s important to you, is it?”
“Yes.”
“May you always think so, chico.”
“My name is Miguel.”
“Miguel it is then.” And then you smile at him, at Miguel with the bicycle and yellow t-shirts and belief in the truth. “I’m Alma.”
--