Note: Written by Laiqualaurelote's suggestion.
Warning: Character death. In more ways than one, haha.

Death of a Gunman
Once Upon a Time in Mexico/Sandman crossover, PG-13

The sun's beating down hard, and the flies buzz vainly around the mariachi's fresh-changed bandages. There's dirt and eggs under there, and soon maggots, and there's nothing to be done about that now. The closest hospital is a hundred miles away, and he used up the last of the whisky two days ago.

It might as well be two hundred, because the mariachi cannot stand up anymore, not under this sun, not yet. The sky burns his eyes, the heat engulfs him. He is aware of every breath his body takes.

He tries to think of Carolina, but even that memory will begin to fade soon.

'Here.'

She comes out of nowhere, the skinny little senorita in her black dress. He can't see her face - all except the bright sky is dark shapes and movement - but she holds out her tiny hand and he grasps it.

'I don't usually do this sort of thing,' says Death, 'but I was passing by, and figured you'd like a hand.'

'You're not here for me, then?'

'Not today.'

She watches him get up and stagger ten painful steps before collapsing again. There's no road in these parts. There won't be people here, not for a few more weeks. She doesn't tell him 'tomorrow', because that would be against the rules, but she does feel for him. She feels for them all, the ones the mariachi has killed, and the ones he has saved.

He must have passed out, for he returns to consciousness with the memory of a dream before his eyes, a dream of Carolina serving cakes to a dark king. He knows he is awake, but there she is still, framed in sunlight, as perfect and lovely as the day she died, her belly round with child. She's dead, he remembers, but it seems like a line in a story, the reality of someone else's life.

As night descends his mind clears, and he realizes he cannot feel or move his legs. So he lies, watches a scorpion creep over his chest, watches the skies. It is cold now, a freezing cold only broken by a hot slice of pain. Around 2 am he realizes, for the third time in his life, that this time he really is going to die. It's like the snuffing of a flame, the winking out of the last star, when he gives up even the desire to live.

He dies with the lightening sky in his eyes. The blood ceases to flow, the organs grind to a halt like so many factories on closing day, and only the hair, the fingernails continue to forget there is nothing more to see here. In the wound, underneath the bandages, life stirs.

The small feeders arrive first, then the large ones; a boot carves a groove in the gravel as they tug at his arm, his chest, leaving bloody paw prints on the ground.

Two weeks have passed, and there is not much left to recognize. Dust whirls in a cloud on the horizon, and a bug appears in its midst, black and roaring; it grows as it approaches, taking on the shape of metal and tire and men. The jeep passes by just a hundred feet from the remains, and screeches to a holt a moment later.

Shouts ring out in the scuttling silence beyond the engine's puttering. Fideo walks to the body - too hot to run, and too late, too - and falls on his knees next to the boots he knows, the wristwatch, the gun.

This is how gunmen die; he knew that all along. It doesn't help. The mariachi had seemed different. The mariachi should have lived forever, touched by destiny, blessed by luck. He touches bare bone, grabs at the jacket and howls.

Flies buzz around them, young, fat, perfect.