Work Text:
Somewhere in Columbia
The clock struck midnight as Alma Madrigal felt the hard lump in her left breast. The twelve chimes of the clock filled her room in the casita like a funeral dirge. She was not long for this world. Death had long ago lost its sense of fear for her. The brutal grind of time had taken that away, dulled it until it was nothing. There were much more terrifying things to her than the idea of not existing.
Once upon a time, she had been blessed with a miracle. The encanto was a poor substitute for Pedro’s love. She had done her best.
She had regrets. Those regrets tormented her more than the slow cancer that was eating away at her body and sapping her health. It was slow going for now, but she was not long for this world. Bruno, god bless his soul was cursed with an inability to lie. He was always a strange one, blunt and incapable of eye contact and she regretted not accepting him for both what he was and what his gift delivered.
The old woman glanced up at the clock, its hands at midnight . . . and then it stopped. The pendulum froze and the ticking ceased.
It was peaceful to say the least. She should have been worried about the clock and fretted over its ancient gears. The thing had been a gift from a travelling German merchant who was saved from a hungry Jaguar by Luisa’s indomitable strength. It was old, it had been old when she was born.
Once, the ticking of a clock had brought her comfort. It was a constant. Now for whatever reason, the silence provided a warmth.
It was hard to feel warmth, with the disease ravaging her. Even the hottest days made her feel like she was bathed in ice water.
Silence filled the room.
For some time she knelt and prayed, not for herself.
She had hurt her family, without even trying, really. That hurt. She hadn’t told anyone yet, Bruno had been sworn to secrecy. He would probably be able to keep a secret until sunrise, when someone asked him or when he got distracted. Poor boy was scatter brained but pure of heart. She wish she’d seen it sooner. She so badly wished that she hadn’t excommunicated her little Brunito.
Alma looked up at the clock, frozen in time.
It was at these times she wished for Pedro the most. That kind of pain never went away. He was part of her. It had been the triplets that kept her from taking her own life. Compared to his love, the encanto was a pale imitation of his light. She was grateful for it, but at the same time it had brought its own kind of pain for her family.
In those early days, she had nothing. She was a widow with three newborn babies. Everything hurt, everything was pain. Every day was a challenge in controlling her screaming anger and sadness. She bottled away everything, for years and years.
And she did more.
In those early days, she had mastered the ability to transmute lead into gold. Such had been valued by the ancient alchemists and the encanto delivered like it was nothing.
Alma hated gold. She preferred potatoes, corn and beans. When you planted gold you only worried about thieves, when you planted a harvest you reaped a hundred fold; even more when Isabella was involved.
She had used gold in the early days. In the first days of the casita, when she had never felt so alone and even her three beautiful babies could not fill the void.
Gold couldn’t buy happiness, gold couldn’t buy the lives of those lost.
But gold could buy blood.
And in those early days, Alma had paid for the blood of the men who’d taken Pedro from her.
As her end neared, she couldn’t help but think of her dark deeds, think of her dark desires from a time long ago.
“Was there anyone who’d ever loved you?” she asked the man dressed in black who was blocking the moonlight from the window.
Half draped in shadow, clad all in black save for a tie burning red, he had been in the room for quite some time. A gut instinct notified Alma of his ethereal presence, he hadn’t made a sound since he entered this remote little mountain village.
Cast in moonlight, his bald head and chiselled features looked like a marble sculpture. He had all of the perfection and all of the warmth of a mannequin. He wasn’t blinking and Alma couldn’t even be sure if he was even breathing.
“I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that.” he said in a voice that oozed with menace. He wasn’t trying to intimidate the old woman, this was just how he talked. Every word out of his mouth was a death threat. For him it was just a Tuesday.
“It’s been over fifty years since we last spoke,” she said like she was conversing with an old friend. “You call yourself, 47. That’s not a name. I always wondered who called you that.”
“Names are for friends,” said the sinister man, unmoving and unperturbed.
“Tell me again how they died,” she asked. “I feel no pleasure for it, but indulge an old woman. Call it the last request of the condemned.”
He blinked for the first time since he entered the room, where he’d watched her sleep, toss, turn and then start to pray. “General Miguel Cortes: strangled with piano wire. Captain Marcus Love, ex-US Cavalry, poisoned with strychnine. Colonel Vidal, found torn open with a meat hook by a masked assailant along with his wife and two children. Corporal Jimenez, killed by an alleged anarchist bombing along with five of his squad members from the Thousand Days War. Corporal Gris, fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Sargent Hernandez, found drowned in a bathtub. Sargent Kreiger, former Prussian army, found eaten by his hunting dogs, ruled an accident. Don Rafiel, governor of Bogota, crushed to death by a falling piano. Don Margolis—
“That’s enough,” Alma raised her hand. “I’ve forgotten half of those names. I made a mistake in asking you. So why are you here, 47?”
“You shouldn’t have to ask,” said the bald assassin. “I can only promise that none of your family will be harmed. Dolores is asleep and Bruno is in a mild sugar coma.”
“Because you made it so,” she looked him in his dead eyes.
“No matter what has been said about me, I’m not biologically capable of sadism,” 47 adjusted his hands for the first time, taking off his black leather gloves to reveal alabaster hands. “You are not well. You have inflammatory breast cancer as a result of a mutated ductal carcinoma in situ. At your present state, I would give you roughly six to four months, depending on external factors.”
“How do you know so much about this?” she inquired, slowly stepping towards a small night table with a bible on it.
“I have detailed knowledge on medicine and human anatomy,” 47 explained.
“So you can be a more efficient killer, a better sicario,” it wasn’t an accusation on her part. It was a simple statement of fact.
“You always knew who I was,” said 47.
“And you haven’t aged a day,” she chuckled. She rubbed the weathered leather bound bible that she’d read until it was on the verge of falling apart. “Are you the devil? Were you there when Jesus Christ had his moment of pain and doubt?”
Agent 47 raised an eyebrow by a milimeter. “I’ve aged extrinsically. Sunlight, poison, chemical weapons and physical trauma has affected my aging. As to your question, there is no devil. When you die there is nothing. There’s no lake of fire and a man in red overalls with a pitchfork. You just go back to where you came from before you were born. If anything, I’m just here to relieve you of tedium.”
Alma looked down at the bible, feeling its pages. Looking at the German Luger pistol hidden under its bound body. She’d kept the gun for over thirty years, just for this very day.
In a way she was flattered. It made her feel important that this devil—if not the devil— was giving her the time of day at her age.
Alma grabbed the gun and flicked the safety off. She aimed the weapon at the window but he was gone.
A flash of lightning lit up the night sky and outside the rain began to fall.
At that very instant, 47 swung an antique Nazi dagger at Alma’s throat.
The old woman gurgled as the Damascus steel knife cut her throat to the bone. Jugular arteries severed, her nightgown turned crimson.
Gun dropping to the ground, Alma clutched her throat, eyes white like bone.
Then like a tree falling, she fell forward.
The moonlight was blocked by rain clouds, the room went dark.
The grandfather clock started ticking again, its pendulum moving once more.
Agent 47 wiped the blood off his dagger with a white handkerchief. His ice blue eyes took in the room as a second lightning bolt cut through the darkness that he’d brought.
Alma had failed to fire off a gunshot. This was good. Out of respect for her, he wasn’t going to kill her family if he could get away with it.
The door hinges creaked. “Abuela!” Mirabell yelled “Abuela, I heard a sound and—
Young Mirabell was greeted by the sight of her grandmother lying dead on the floor in a pool of her own blood, a handgun laying just out of her reach.
Screaming like a banshee, the young Madrigal frantically looked around the room but saw no one.
It was like her Abuela had been slain by a ghost.
Outside, deep in the Colombian jungles, a pair of icy blue eyes narrowed.
Once upon a time, Alma Madrigal had paid with gold for blood. She found a young assassin looking to make a name for himself. She had given him more than a hundred men to kill, and every last one had met a violent death. What she’d paid for, he had delivered.
Agent 47 vanished into the jungles. The Madrigals would never see him again. There was a blood contract that lay with Alma, and it died with Alma.