[OUATIM] A matter of succession (PG-13)

[winter]

Fandom: OUATIM
Rated: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: Everything from OUATIM belongs to Rodriguez and assorted. Fun, not profit.

Inspired by the movie "The Mark of Zorro" with Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.


A MATTER OF SUCCESSION

by Beth (bwinter@extenuation.net)



When Alejandro enters the bar, his fury is a dark cloud above his head. His guitar is a wreck, shattered by bullets, but he still props it next to his stool. He takes no notice of the other mariachi until the man sits down at his side.

The man is old, in that dry Mexican way that means he can be fifty or eighty. He has a guitar. His eyes are dark as he looks at Alejandro.

Alejandro listens to a monologue on life, death and revenge. By the time it finishes, he has a fair idea who he's talking to. He takes a moment to wonder if the other ballads he used to sing are based on true stories, too.

He offers his time, his attention, his absolute obedience, if he can learn how to play guns as well as he did his guitar, before the narco trafficantes killed his music and his sister. The offer is accepted.

~

"Why me?" A rustle of worn cotton over denim, the rattle of imported Swiss breathmints.

"You're good. You got fucked by Lady Mexico, royally." A smile, bullet-bright in the dark. "You look nice."

~

The first thing is not shooting, but acrobatics. How to run, to jump, to walk. Alejandro doesn't get a break until he can climb from a fourth-floor window onto the ground within a minute, while singing the Mexican anthem.

Then he has to learn about the narco trafficantes. Their names, histories, internal politics. He learns the most efficient ways to intimidate a footsoldier, and to put a boss off his guard. He starts to recognize cocaine in each of its forms. He spends a week under the influence of each of the drugs someone might slip him, and when he emerges from the stupour, he is taught how to defeat each of them.

Alejandro thinks they may get to guns then, but instead the old man takes him shopping.

~

"This is useless!"

You can never mistake cordite for anything else. It burns the back of your throat, paints grey spiderwebs behind your eyes.

"You did it once, honey bunny. You'll do it again."

"Fuck you. Fuck you sideways, with a blunt spoon, in the middle of Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City, may it choke on its own vomit and drag this shithole of a country down into the grave."

"That's the spirit."

~

The things they buy look normal - dark clothes, white shirts, buttons, trims and lengths of chain. Alejandro's next lesson is how to sew, and he takes a strange pleasure in it. He lets his mind escape into the weave of the fabric, the twist of the thread, away from the faces he sees in dreams. The result is much better than his previous mariachi jacket.

He asks if such memorable clothes won't draw attention to him.

The old man tells him that if he learns right, no-one will have the time to pay attention to what he wears.

~

A sharp sound as the glass panel in the door rattles under a fist. "You hibernating in the bathroom, or what?!"

"I dare you to put on eyeliner quicker."

"Point. Just get out of there before next Wednesday, there's a good kid."

~

The next day, the old man tells Alejandro that he will teach him how to play.

By this time, Alejandro knows better than to protest that he's been making a living as a mariachi since he was sixteen.

When the guitar case opens, his breath stops. It starts again, slower, and he picks up a strange gun. Three barrels, short, long and short again, on some sort of a belt.

I'm not going to use this one, he says.

The old man smiles, then laughs out loud. The laugh is hollow, rattling, as if Mexico had sucked out his bones and blood alike.

Give it time, boy, he says.

~

Click. Click. Click.

"Stop that."

Click.

"Well, excuse me, oh grandmaster, I thought we were on a schedule here. Wanted to get full mobility back, and all that shit."

Click. Click.

A splash of water and a yelp. The smell of burnt circuitry.

"What the fuck?"

"We can rebuild you." A Swiss Army knife, opening. "We have the technology."

~

And then the old man says he's ready.

~

"Up for a test drive, kiddo?"

~

It's supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission, but it goes awry the moment someone shoots someone else in another corner of the bar. Alejandro takes the opportunity to shoot the guy at the table next to his - one of the ones who killed his sister, and now he'll never hurt another girl again - and then dives behind the counter.

He bumps into a warm body as he scoots back. It's much too soft and nice-smelling to be the bartender.

"Hiya," the woman mutters. English, American, California. "You with Moreno's people?"

It takes Alejandro half a second to have a gun pressed against her head, where her blond hair falls across her left eye. "I am against them."

"Isn't that just a fucking hoot." A click, and he looks down to find a submachine gun pushing into his crotch. "So am I."

There's another submachine gun in the bar, and they both cover their heads as the bottles above them explode in a shower of deadly splinters.

"What's going on?" Alejandro hisses.

"Fucked if I know. AFN raid, probably, but strictly under wrap and cover. Which makes it kinda tough for us, amigo, since we kill an AFN fuckmook and they can make our life very unpleasant."

"Then we'll be precise." He slams new magazines into his guns. "You shoot first."

She wraps her right hand around his wrist. The fingers are cold and hard, part bone, part metal, part flesh. A prosthetic. "Not much precision yet. Moreno fucked me over bad."

"What for?" They're in a pocket of quiet in the chaos of thunder and cordite. He can see her belt buckle, the only part of her clothes that isn't black. Pink letters float in a disc of clear liquid and plastic. Metro Holografix.

"I used to be corporate security. Now I'm very damn distinctly not. You?"

"I'm just a mariachi."

"A or The?"

"A. For the moment. Alejandro."

"Tally. I point, you shoot?"

"Yes."

Tally smiles then, knife-sharp, Death in scarred pale skin and California blonde. "Let's rock this joint."

~

They get out of the bar untouched, for a definition of untouched that doesn't take minor scrapes and bruised ribs into account. The old man with the guitar is waiting at the car in a back alley, and he raises his eyebrows at the too-thin American his student's supporting.

Alejandro starts to say something, but Tally interrupts him. "You're him. El. El Mariachi. Holy hell."

Something shifts, and the old man disappears. El smirks. His stance is danger, darkness and Mexico combined.

"And you are?" he asks.

There are footsteps in the alley behind them. The newcomer is thin, brittle, dressed in black. His hair is silver streaked with dark. He could be Tally's brother, father, archetypal predecessor. His sunglasses are large and opaque.

"She's a stupid American cunt who found out Mexico got her by the balls, screwed her over and left her to choke on the desert dust. And then she got up and got the bad guys down. Sound familiar?"

El smiles and walks up to the other man. Alejandro and Tally stare, forgotten, as he touches the sunglasses. "Sands. It's good to see you."

"Likewise, you dickless Mexican bastard. Who's the boy?"

"He's a mariachi who got in the middle of a gunfight. Of course."

A knife-laugh, bullets rattling in an empty shell of a man. "Glad to see the old traditions being upheld. Gives a whole new meaning to living to fight another day?"

"Yes."

Later, in the hotel, Tally says the fried pork they're eating is simply to die for, and Alejandro agrees. They never will find out why that line sends El and Sands into fits of laughter.



[FINIS]



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